In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Fix You
by Feisty Y. Beden
Summary: Reeling from traumatic events in high school, Alice hid away a part of her soul. Can Jasper help her find it again, when she didn't know she was looking? Story is rated M for language. A/J, AH, OOC. Part of larger series *In the Days of Auld Lang Syne*
1. The Wrong Child

**A/N: Well, here is my first foray into fiction in over fourteen years. Thanks to the Ravelry Unicorn Ladies, Ravelry Fan Fiction, Saturday night chat group (Jayne Rulis, grendelsmother, Becca Graymoor, Ceci, stringcat, KnittingVamp7), and an extra thanks to Becca Graymoor for being endlessly hilarious and supportive over IM and for baking some really excellent cookies.**

This story is part of **Back in the Days of Auld Lang Syne**, a larger, multiple-author universe with dovetailing but independent storylines. Links to come.

I'm also giving a shoutout to **AngstGoddess003**, because her story was what finally broke me.

This story is rated M for language only.

All _Twilight_ hoopijoob belongs to Stephenie Meyer, blah blah blah standard disclaimer-cakes.

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**Chapter 1: The Wrong Child **

_I'm not supposed to be like this_

_But it's okay_

_- R.E.M._(1)

_What were you thinking? Why did you think you could do this?_ I sat on the edge of the rumpled bed and clutched the cheap polyester gown to my chest. It had that particular smell found in every drama department costume room, a heady mix of stale greasepaint, the body odor of decades of kids with burgeoning hormones and the panic sweat of stage fright, and a futile spritzing of Febreeze. The wig I'd kicked under the bed was a little newer, I thought, smelling more of PVC storage bag than spirit gum or Aquanet. The floor-length blonde wig hadn't even felt that bad against my scalp. My hair was short enough that I didn't need to pin-curl it up or put on a wig cap. I'd tucked my hair under the lace of the wig and held the musty costume up to my chin when I made the mistake of looking at myself in the full-length mirror on my closet door.

A long-forgotten blonde girl stared back at me, and I found myself drawn to the glass. Just three steps, and I was face to face with that girl. She was beautiful, happy, complete. I traced her face lightly with a fingertip, leaving a long smudge on the mirror. My head spun, and for a second I felt like I was the one trapped in the mirror, the blonde girl outside. That she would go, leave me here, trapped inside forever. I'd locked her in long enough, and it was my turn. _You can't keep me here_, I'd heard her murmur in the back of my head. She would go, and no one would find me here behind the glass. Alone again, always alone. Alone and forgotten. _Goodbye_, she would whisper as she slipped out the door, locking it behind her.

I don't know how I ended up kneeling on the floor, grasping my short hair and rocking back and forth. How many minutes did I lose this time? I'd ripped the wig off my head and crumpled the dress into a ball on my lap. _She didn't win_, I tried to comfort myself as I shakily brought myself back up to the bed. _You are still you. She didn't come back_. My wind-up alarm clock ticked relentlessly, pounding in my ears, slivers of my life sliced away a second at a time. I didn't even notice I'd been clenching my fists. I pried my hands open and saw the deep half-moons my fingernails had made. My face started to itch from the salty residue of my tears. I rubbed my cheeks roughly and sighed.

Well, one thing was abundantly clear: there was no way I could go to the big party tonight as Rapunzel. Fuck. Now what was I going to do?

Fucking Rosalie. No, that wasn't fair—I'd been excited about tonight's fairy tale masquerade theme too. I loved dressing up; I loved pretending I was someone else and slipping into a different skin. I mean, didn't I do that every day anyway? The party was an opportunity to put on a different face than the one I wore every day: happy, bubbly, perky, skippy, multitude-of -adjectives-ending-in-a-cutesy-diminutive-Y fucking Alice. Maybe I'd show them the real me, I'd thought. No one here knew that girl. Maybe it would be fun to imagine what my life would have been like, before… it would be safe to let her out because everyone would think she was just a character. I could be vulnerable and sad, and they'd all say, "That's so Alice to be all fucking Stanislavski with her costume." And no one would know.

But I hadn't counted on this, hadn't counted on being so freaked by that Other Girl. It was supposed to be my vacation, my one-night respite from sucking in my sad like an unwanted belly pooch. I'd gotten a kick out of ordering my costume at the rental place, tickled by the possibility of wandering town in my old hair, my past life, _and no one would know_. It would be like that dream where you're the only one not wearing clothes, except nobody notices. But when I'd put the wig on and looked at myself, it was like the regular version of that dream where you're the only one not wearing clothes—everyone points and laughs and calls you "freak." And the loudest voice was coming from my own head. _Who could love you? You're just like her; you are going to end up __**just like her**__._ "Shut UP!" I hissed through clenched teeth. It seemed as though That Voice got louder every day.

Thankfully, the ticking clock grabbed my attention again. I looked at the square, retro-futuristic numbers on its face. It was three o'clock already, and Rosie was expecting me in an hour. And I could not _possibly_ go out in that costume. And I could not _possibly_ show up without a costume—Rosie would have my metaphorical balls on a stick. Giving up, I went to hang the costume back in my closet. The smudge on the mirror caught my eye, and I shuddered, remembering what it felt like to feel trapped on the wrong side of the mirror. That's when it came to me: Alice in Wonderland.

I could probably cobble together a costume pretty easily—a few years back I'd gone through a faux-Tenniel kinderwhore phase, and I had a sky blue peter-pan collared dress and white satin bloomers I'd sewn on my mom's clunky old Singer. I had that frilly white apron Bella the cake girl had given me as a joke during spring break last year after I'd complained about the drunk college kids getting too rowdy at the bar and spilling drinks all over my clothes. And of _course_ I had patent-leather platform Mary Janes, because what self-respecting faux-Tenniel kinderwhore wannabe didn't? Alice in Fucking Wonderland it would be.

***

"You're late," Rosalie groused without even looking up from unpacking another box of chintzy decorations. It was only a few minutes past four, but Rosalie could be a bitch like that. I hiked up my striped tights, the crotch of which had slithered to my knees while I sprinted from the bus to the trusty 'corn. Ah, the Unicorn. I swear, the only useful thing I learned in college was that weekend course I took in bartending. I didn't like to drink much, but I p0wned the shit out of mixology.

Since Rosalie could be pretty stingy for being such a rich heiress or whatever she was, my hourly wage was more of an _honorarium_, but I had a way of sassing hefty tips out of the increasingly drunk. It was amazing how a little giggle, a little over-the-bar lean, and a lingering touch during a standard drink handoff could turn a six-dollar drink into a twenty-and-keep-the-change. It wasn't a bad gig. I didn't mind being on my feet for hours, and the busywork of measuring jiggers and trying to be a pixie _Cocktail_ Tom Cruise (minus the creepy Scientology) kept my hands and head occupied. The endless bantering could get exhausting, but it still was better than letting my thoughts take over. I embraced the static of shallow conversation, especially in the wee hours of night. And the Unicorn was never crowded enough to be too stressful to the mistress of the bar.

A calculated, exasperated sigh from Rosalie reminded me of the barnacle-on-my-ass quality the job could have at times.

"Rosalie, you must chill," I said as I slipped under the bar to my station. This stupid party. Rose could be a colossal bitch on a good day, but this damn New Year's shindig was turning her, well, into a giant barnacle on my ass. "I'm three minutes late, okay? We'll have all the streamers and glitter and crap up before you can say 'slave labor.'" I ducked to avoid a hideous inflatable New Year's baby thrown at my head. Putting on my best game face, I hummed cheerily to placate Rose. To the casual observer, it would appear I was humming the famous _South Pacific_ ditty, "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right out of My Hair," but in my head I was singing one of my work-time staples, "I'm Gonna Cut a Bitch Whose Name Sounds Like Schmosalie Schmale." It was going to be a long night.

***

Ten minutes to 11:00, and the party was hopping. The flickering strobe lights and awkward costume gave the approaching giant turnip a disconcerting _Nosferatu_ feel as she lurched toward the bar. I had to read her lips over the noise of the techno and the babbling crowd. "Give me a, um," she began, eyes struggling to focus.

Irritated at her hesitation when there were so many others waiting, I interrupted, "Gin and tonic, extra lime, dash of … grenadine, seriously?"

Giant Turnip's mouth hung open, and she nodded.

I wasn't sure exactly how I sometimes knew what drink someone wanted, but I forced myself not to examine it too much. I cringed whenever it happened, hated the weird buzzing feeling I'd get before the words would just form in my head. Sometimes I could actually see specific bottle labels in my mind. Bombay Sapphire. Crown Royal. Johnny Walker. Boone's Fucking Farm (Rosalie would die before we carried that shit). Most days I tried to ignore the words and images, but tonight I was focusing so hard on moving the customers along that I couldn't stop myself from blurting her order out. And now she was looking at me almost afraid. I knew that look. I'd lived a whole year with that same look on a hundred different faces. I was furious with myself for letting the noise take away my calculated control.

Oh god, the din tonight. I hated it, hated the frat-house smells of oversexed dude-bros, spilled drinks, cheap perfume, the bodies pressed against the bar, reaching out to me like they were on the Titanic and I was the last lifeboat. This was almost too much static. The frenzy of singletons trying to find their New Year's midnight kiss hung heavily in the air—I could almost taste the desperation. What was the big deal? What made tonight so special? I'd rather be alone than appear so _needy_.

An overeager beefy arm nearly clotheslined me across the windpipe as I handed Giant Turnip her Gin and Tonic on the Rag. I wanted so much to be like Rosalie then, able to shoot two-foot spears out of my aura like a freaky emo Wolverine—_SCHPROING_! _SHISH-KABOBED_! People left Rosalie alone when she chose.

Even now in her riskankulous Little-Bo-Peep outfit, tits almost putting her eyes out, Rosalie had a comfortable no-fly-zone buffer. The only guy remotely near was this special, and I mean _short-bus special_, guy in giant footie pajamas and a Burger King crown. She was doing her best to dissuade him, practically swatting him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, but he kept circling around her, probably wanting to sniff her butt or something.

Overeager Beefy Arm slammed down a crumpled bill to get my attention, flipping a bowl of peanuts in the process. Peanuts rained down on me, and a few fell into my cleavage. Fuck, no. "Gimme 'nother Sam Adams," voice of Overeager Beefy Arm slurred.

"Sorry, shug, I'm on break," I purred, mentally adding "you careless beefy fucking fucker" while pivoting on the ball of my foot and grabbing a bottle of San Pellegrino before ducking under the bar.

"Scoot!" I said to the unfortunate, albeit very brave, overweight pale dude in assless chaps who was sitting on the barstool farthest from Beefy Arm. When he didn't move, I pressed the cold bottle right into the nearest exposed asscheek. God, it looked like bread dough rising. Assless Chaps yelped, and I said, "Sorry, employee stool," smiling apologetically, and thinking that maybe I shouldn't use the word "stool" around a guy in assless chaps.

Assless Chaps galumphed over to a wall and thoughtfully rubbed his chilled cheek while his eyes swept the room. Was he waiting for someone? Hoping to find someone? Watching his methodical ass rubbing, I thought it was wise to drape one of the ubiquitous bar ShamWOWs (anything else was sacrilege, according to Rose) over the still-warm vinyl seat before sitting down. I cracked the San Pel open and wiggled the aching toes in my unforgiving Mary Janes. I took a long pull of Italy's finest nonalcoholic fizziness and sighed.

Resting my chin on the San Pel bottle, I let my eyelids flutter closed for a moment. The bar had never been this crowded before, not even during spring break. Rose's efforts to pimp out the party had not been in vain. I was happy for her and the Unicorn, but the competing energies of the bar patrons was too much. Listening to the crowd's incomprehensible murmuring with my eyes closed, I started feeling the buzzing. Oh no, not now. It was that humming in my chest, the reason I preferred being at the bar most nights instead of in my narrow twin bed. I froze, hoping it would pass. I slowed down my breathing, letting in only thimblefuls of air, barely allowing my ribcage to expand. They couldn't find me if I could be still enough.

I continued taking in tiny sips of air, but the buzzing didn't stop. This was different, though. It wasn't moving up to my brain, and I could still hear the noise of the bar. I still had control of my thoughts. What was going on? I cracked an eye open cautiously.

"Too much tequila?" I was surprised to see a sweet-faced guy in Victorian garb gazing at me with amused concern. I turned to face him. How curious—he had a mint julep in his hand, but I didn't remember serving him. He absentmindedly brushed a lock of hair behind his ear with a gloved hand. Oh, he was Mustard Gloves! I remembered him now. I'd blurted out his drink as well and had been too embarrassed to look him in the face. Mustard gloves. Even the gloves had seemed to look at me mockingly at the time.

"Not while I'm working," I said, gesturing toward the beer taps with my head. "It's just … sometimes there is such a thing as too many people." Mustard Gloves swiveled toward me and smiled sympathetically. The vibration ramped up in amplitude, the force of the thrumming nearly knocking me off the stool. I would normally be freaking the fuck out, but this energy felt different, almost good.

Mustard Gloves smiled broadly and said, "I'm sorry, Alice."

I felt panicky that he seemed to know who I was. "How did you know my name?" I bristled.

"I, uh," he looked uncomfortable. He made an oddly graceful, yet marginally butch Vanna White gesture up and down my body. It was like beams of light were radiating from his gloved hands, warming me. Curiouser and curiouser. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of my thoughts—I was supposed to be on high alert. _Code orange_! "Aren't you, um, Alice?"

"Well, _yes_, but who told you that?" Annoyed at his cageyness, I nearly added something ball-shriveling, but his completely befuddled expression softened me. _Maybe I'll let him live_.

"I'm sorry—I'm not trying to be a dick. If you aren't supposed to be Alice in Wonderland, then who are you?" Suddenly his eyes widened, and he stammered, "Oh god, you're not in costume, are you? You must think I'm a dick. I'm sorry. You're right. I am a dick." He looked so much like a little boy caught accidentally looking up the teacher's skirt at naptime that I couldn't help laughing.

"Oh, my costume! Jesus fuck, I thought you were one of those creepy bar stalkers or something. It's been a long night. Some asshole just flung a bowl of peanuts down my tits. That reminds me," I said, reaching down my top, "want a peanut?"

Mustard Gloves flashed an impish smile and shook his head. "I don't normally turn down cleavage peanuts, but I don't know your name, and it wouldn't be gentlemanly." This was one charming motherfucker.

"Oh, well then. Hi. Hello, I'm Alice in Wonderland. And also Alice. Alice being my name. My costume and my name. Multifunctional." Smooth, Alice, real smooth. Bravo. "So what are you supposed to be exactly?" I asked, nervously crossing and uncrossing my legs. "Willy Wonka or some shit?" I noticed Mustard Gloves take in my striped tights, and my heart lurched a bit.

He didn't say anything, but he bent his head down and solemnly tapped a sign under the hatband of his top hat, a small cardboard square with "10/6" written in a fancy copperplate script. "Oh! You're the Mad Hatter!" I hadn't taken in the whole of his costume earlier, this evening's chaos turning the bar patrons into walking synecdoche.

"When I'm not participating in activities related to haberdashery, I go by Jasper," he said, extending one of his mustard-gloved hands and tipping his hat with the other. We shook hands stiffly, formally, and then we both broke down snickering.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you, Jasper." I was surprised to find I really meant it. I wasn't just bullshitting and pretending to be friendly. That was … different. Again, disconcerting. Code Orange, I reminded myself. I glanced at an imaginary watch. "Well, I should go back to the thirsting masses," I said, hopping off the stool.

"Yes, ma'am," Jasper of the Mustard Gloves said, leaping to his feet when he saw me stand. The guy was taking this Victorian costume thing a bit far. He flashed that impish smile again. "See you later? Maybe in an hour?" What was an hour from now?

A rattling drew my attention. Assless Chaps, having met up with his _totally_ cute baby-faced boyfriend, who dressed as a sort of freakish nightmare jailbait Howdy Doody—huh, who knew? And what fairy tale had Assless Chaps and nightmare jailbait Howdy Doody?—was swinging a New Year's noisemaker around. New Year's. Midnight. Right. Wait, _what_? What was Mustard Gloves saying?

"Ha, ha," I fake-laughed. "What?"

Jasper pawed at the floor nervously with his spats. "Oh, I mean, not to be presumptuous or anything. I just, well, my buddies seem occupied—that's Edward spinning the tunes up there, and you've probably seen Emmett trying to get your boss to look at him, and you're the coolest cat I've met tonight. And this is the best mint julep I have ever had north of the Mason-Dixon. I nearly wept, did you know?"

I snorted. "Wow, drinking a mint julep and admitting to weeping, that's not doing much for your macho cred there, buddy."

He grinned widely. "Let me explain how it works. When one is truly comfortable with one's supreme machismo, one can drink what one chooses and freely admit to weeping. One could even wear six-inch platform heels and beaded halter top with macho-ly pride. B.F. Skinner said so."

"Right, the secret diary of B.F. Skinner. I must have missed that one." I ducked under the bar. "I'm working, Macho Man. Let me know if you need help hooking up your corset. I hear they're a real bitch."

"See you in an hour," Jasper said, tipping his hat once more with his drink-holding hand, turning on his heel, and walking back into the crowd, whistling "Auld Lang Syne." He didn't look back once, almost as if he knew I'd be watching his every step. As I said, charming motherfucker.

I thought it wasn't possible for the bar to get more crowded, but this must be what it's like when you are giving birth and you just don't think your cervix could possibly become the diameter of a bagel. (I took a moment to curse my ninth grade health teacher for forever ruining bagels for me. Dilated cervix with cream cheese? I think I'll pass.) The view from behind the bar toward the dance floor was like a living _Where's Waldo?_ two-page spread. There was no fucking way I was finding Waldo.

After my break, I started looking at the customers differently. I smiled to myself when I'd catch people flirting awkwardly, finding excuses to touch someone's arm, laughing a little too eagerly at a joke. Normally I'd be rolling my eyes at their transparency and neediness, but now I felt a tug in my chest, a twinge of wistfulness as they danced cautiously around each other, not wanting to tip their hand unless they knew the other person were interested. Sometimes it must be nice to be normal.

I found myself constantly scanning the crowd, trying to find a certain top hat with a "10/6" cardboard square tucked under the hatband. _Stop being ridiculous. That life's not for you_. Annoyed, I kicked my unzipped backpack, which I'd stowed in its usual spot near the cash register. The Rapunzel wig fell out. Funny, I didn't remember taking it with me, but that was nothing new. I was always absentmindedly picking things up and dropping them somewhere else, as if I were a human magic claw arcade game. Feeling suddenly emboldened, I thought, "What the hell?" and put it on my head. I had paid extra to rent the full-length wig; might as well give it a public viewing. Miles away, my bedroom and the Other Girl felt harmless, just a bad dream now. How bad could it have been?

Still, I made a point not to catch my reflection in any of the bar's mirrors. I gazed down, mesmerized at the long yellow hair once again cascading down my shoulders. Absentmindedly I combed my fingers through the acrylic Barbie hair. Wiping the bar down with a ShamWOW in my other hand, I felt a pull, a presence, a prickle on the back of my neck. I froze.

My head instinctively popped up, and from across the room I saw Jasper staring at me confused, as if he were trying to do long division in his head. As if the long division problem were written _directly on my face_. What was his deal? My earlier panic began to break over me in waves. We were both frozen, looking at the other for what seemed like ages. I turned away first. Cheeks burning, I ripped the wig off my head and threw it back under the bar. _Fuck you, Mustard Gloves_, I thought sourly. I felt like a fool for believing, even for those few moments, that I was a part of that world. I returned to my buffing and bent down far enough that I could practically see the molecular structure of the wood.

"Okay, revelers, two minutes to midnight!" announced the pretty fucking hot radio DJ Rosalie had hired—Edward, I think Mustard Gloves had said. It was a shame to keep that kind of hotness on the radio where no one could appreciate it. I glumly noticed Bella the cake lady loitering near the DJ booth expectantly, and the glances I saw the DJ sneak back at her told me that her expectation was not entirely unwarranted.

I felt small and alone, and I wondered what my mother was doing at this moment. I imagined her sitting on the hard bed with her knees hugged to her chest, looking out at the moonlight through chicken-wire reinforced glass. I wondered if she was thinking about me too. Nonononononono, I wasn't going to do this now. I gritted my teeth and straightened up, hands fluttering, trying to find something physical to do. Taking Edward's cue, folks were beginning to count down, pairing up shyly, or eagerly, or as if it were the most normal thing in the world not to be alone at the start of a new year.

I heard someone clear his throat behind me. "Ms. In-Wonderland, I believe we had an appointment." My face broke into a wide grin before I could stop myself but fell when I remembered that freakshow look he'd given me just a few moments earlier.

Guardedly, I put on a more neutral expression and turned to see Jasper extending a mustard glove to me. I gave him a courteous but tight smile and ducked under the bar again to meet him. It was easier to keep my promise than to make some excuse for bailing. The counting was growing louder now. Still, I just didn't want to pretend that I wasn't upset by that weird moment across the bar. "Um, I kind of don't _do_ the whole New Year's thing," I began.

"There's a New Year's thing?" he asked. "I'm afraid we didn't cover that in my anthropology class. We are just standing near each other at an insignificant date and time, because everyone else is being all couples skate, and I think you are cool. And you made me weep, so now I have to stay in your good graces, lest you write it on the wall in the women's bathroom."

Damn it, I meant to be unreadable and maybe a little disapproving, but I grinned. I couldn't help it. I was powerless in the presence of such smooth motherfucker charm. "Well, it just so happens I have a Sharpie in my pocket and some itchy graffiti fingers."

"I'll have to do my best then. Would you like to see the interpretive soft-shoe number I put together for you in the last hour?" Without waiting for a reply, he started Flashdance-sprinting in place and swinging his arms in big windmill circles, hissing "_Alice_!" Fosse-style.

I surprised myself by doubling over laughing. I was finding it hard to maintain bladder control when faced with such dramasexuality. "Hey, guy, you're _really_ not suppressing my urge to Sharpie-bomb your masculinity over in the ladies room," I said once I'd regained composure.

"Damn, those were my best moves," he said, smirking and slightly out of breath.

I wondered if he was just a gigantic dork or if this literal song and dance was to make me smile. Maybe both. I could tell from the increased activity around me that we were hitting the home stretch. "Ten! Nine! Eight!" Oh god, this was awkward. Highly awkward. I didn't know where to look. How did people do this? "Seven! Six! Five!" My tongue felt about the size of an inflated Aerobed. "Four! Three! Two!" I felt a warm, cotton-sheathed hand slip around mine. "One! Happy New Year!" The bar exploded with cheers and noisemakers, and there was wall-to-wall macking. It was disgusting. And looked incredible.

Before I could take it all in, Jasper spun me toward him, bowing deeply and planting a gentlemanly kiss on my hand with plush, soft lips. As he straightened up, I gave him a toothy smile and leaned my head against his shoulder. We stood in silence, hand in hand, as the bar drunkenly slurred through "Auld Lang Syne." _Happy New Year_, I thought to myself. Maybe this time I almost believed it.

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1 Copyright © R.E.M./Athens Ltd.

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**A/N:** So there it is. If you feel like reviewing, I wouldn't kick you out of bed in the morning. La la la.


	2. The Tower

**A/N: I already had two chapters written while I was waiting for to be back up. Don't expect the rest of the chapters to go up so readily! **

**Thanks as always to Ravelry Unicorners, Saturday night chat ladies (Jayne Rulis, Becca Graymoor, grendelsmother, Ceci, KnittingVamp7, and Stringcat), and the creative team of _In the Days of Auld Lang Syne_****.**

**Stephenie Meyer owns all this shit. Yeah. Please don't sue me, Stephenie Meyer. I am po' anyway. Unless you really want this handful of lint and buttons. **

**SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!!**

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**Chapter 2: The Tower**

_When she was twelve years old the witch shut her up in a tower in the midst of the wood, and it had neither steps nor a door, only a small window above._

_-The Brothers Grimm _(1)

It was a strange feeling to wake up smiling. In my early morning drowsiness, I wasn't even sure why I felt so good. I slowly sat up, eyes closed, stretching high in my flannel two-piece pajamas. Behind my eyelids I had a flash of a crinkly-eyed smile, a top hat, mustard gloves. The sudden memory sent a pulse of heat through my whole body. My face flushed, my heart jumped, and my stomach did a couple somersaults. _Oh, right_. I couldn't help myself from grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I was nothing but teeth. My cheeks were hurting from smiling so much last night. They were so sore that I wondered if I'd been smiling in my sleep. Oh no, this was terrible.

I wanted to be guarded; I wanted to be cautious. I felt like I had to board up my windows, preparing for the hurricane. I knew this was the thing I _ought_ to do, the safe thing. This was what I always did whenever I let anyone catch even a glimpse of my real face. It felt almost mechanical at this point, almost like flipping a literal switch. I called it "resetting my parameters." My body would want to accept someone, to let him or her in, but my mind would go into overdrive to numb me, to remind myself to expect nothing but disappointment and betrayal. It was okay, because it was a conscious and deliberate choice. I breathed deeply and tried to find the switch in my mind's eye. Scrunching up my face, I tried to force it to happen. _Come on, come on, come on, just do it_.

I couldn't. I mean, I was _capable_ of doing it. The switch was right there. I could demonize him before I got to know him, the way I always did. I could focus on that face he'd made when he'd caught me in the wig. I could see that face, imagine it laughing at me. It would be so easy. It would make me safe. In my mind's eye, I gazed at the switch, fingers twitching, wanting to pull the lever. Knowing it was for my own good.

But I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to, even though I knew it was for the best. I let my face relax and just sat there for a while on my rumpled bed, smiling to myself with my eyes closed. I held the back of my hand to my mouth, trying to remember the feeling of Jasper's lips on them. I shivered, reliving that moment of skin-to-skin contact. Had he really … _done_ that? We'd stood, hand in gloved hand, for as long as I could before the bar queue grew too long and Rosalie gave me the hairy eyeball. I'd been terrified that he'd try to kiss me at midnight and was almost disappointed when he hadn't. But I also loved him a little for just letting us _be_, for letting me rest my head against his side with the chaos whirring around us. It was as if he'd known better than I that what I needed the most in that moment was stillness.

As I'd reluctantly pulled myself away, I'd been tempted to scrawl my number on a napkin and shove it in his vest pocket. I almost burst out laughing that I'd even entertained such a notion. I'd never been one of those girls, even when I was the Other Girl. You couldn't pay me enough to subject myself to such humiliation, not then, and certainly not now.

He held tight to my hand even as I pulled away and gave it a little squeeze. "Are you here tomorrow night, beautiful?"

I fought the instinct to look behind me to see whom he must be addressing, but he never broke his gaze with me. _Oh, it's me. I'm the beautiful one._ I bit my lower lip to keep from smiling and making a total fool of myself.

"I would be, but Rose is actually giving us the day off tomorrow," I replied, gently tugging my hand out of his grip. "But yeah, I'm here every night except Mondays." I didn't tell him what I did on Monday nights. It was a bit early for that. And I never told people where I went on Mondays anyway.

His brow furrowed, but he quickly recovered. I was watching him so intently that I actually saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "Well, if you don't have plans yet—um, not assuming you wouldn't have plans!" His eyes darted around in a panic as he let down his smooth motherfucker exterior for a second. As much as I was discovering that I was a puddle of mush in the face of Mr. Debonair, I almost preferred when he became this bewildered little boy. It made me want to swoop him up and protect him from the monsters under the bed, and I laughed ruefully at the idea of me trying to protect anyone from anything.

"Hey, you're laughing! Don't laugh at me; you promised!" He stuck his lip out in a mock pout.

I was unprepared for the one-two punch of Mr. Debonair doing a deliberate impression of a bewildered little boy. _Circuitry overload_. When I remembered how to inhale and exhale like a normal person, I smirked and said, "I promised no such thing, Twinkletoes. In fact, I think I'm going to require that you do some Martha Graham next to win back my favor after such insult." Jasper looked up in concentration, no doubt trying to speed-choreograph something. Deciding to let him off the hook, I said, "P.S., I don't have anything planned for tomorrow." Shit, was that too bold? Had he been asking me to do something? I braced myself for mortification.

He grinned widely. _Here it comes_. "So, would you like to have dinner? With me?" Jasper added hastily. Well, that was unexpected.

I hadn't realized I'd clenched my hands into fists to prepare for in-my-face rejection. As I let my hands relax, I said, "Sure, that would not suck. I guess." Nonchalant. Cool. Breezy. Bitchy? Oh, crap. I forced a smile on my face so I'd seem friendlier and to fight the urge to smack myself on the forehead. Why did I have to overthink everything?

To my relief, Jasper grinned widely again and said, "Excellent! Can we meet here at six?" Did he know that I wouldn't want to give him my address, that only about three people in my life knew where I lived? In any case, I felt a surge of relief that he hadn't even asked. How did he always seem to know what I needed?

_Be careful, Alice_. I heard that voice in my head again. I kicked the blankets off and stood up quickly, wobbling slightly from the ensuing head rush. No. I was being cautious. I _would_ be cautious. But couldn't I enjoy this just a little? Wouldn't it be all right to let go and just let myself feel something? _You don't turn your back on the ocean, Alice_. Right. Right, that life was not for me. My heart fell a little. I was tired of my life in this tower I'd built. _This was your choice_, I had to remind myself. _You traded that life for safety_. Still, I couldn't help myself from humming and twirling in my room as I put my clothes away from yesterday's pre-work freakout. It was okay to dance if no one could see me. It wasn't cheating.

***

As the hours drew on, our interaction began to fade in my memory. I still had butterflies in my belly when I'd think of him, when I'd dare to murmur _JasperJasperJasper_ under my breath as I rifled through my flea market chest of drawers for an appropriate outfit for tonight, but doubts began to creep into my head. Maybe I was imagining that we'd had a connection. He'd never actually said the word "date." It was just dinner. Dinner didn't necessarily mean anything. Dinner was merely an intake of food for the purpose of bodily nourishment. Maybe he only wanted to hang out with me as friends. _Friends_, I thought bitterly, _as if I even know what that is_.

I suspected Rosalie and Bella thought of me as a friend, and I was, in a fashion, but I knew a lot more about them than they knew about me. It was hard to consider people as your friends if you never showed them who you really were and when you weren't sure they'd even like you if they saw the whole you. I didn't like hanging out with people one on one because it was exhausting to pretend all the time. Work was one thing, because it was such tiny parcels of conversation. I made a drink, shot the shit, and sent the person on his or her way. Easy. But hours of conversation with the same people, hoping they wouldn't dance too close to certain topics, always having a lie at the ready? It was easier being lonely than under that kind of constant pressure. Again, it was my choice.

So maybe this wasn't a date. What did one wear to a non-date? Or, more accurately, what could one wear that was date-ish enough to be delicious just in case it were a date, but not _so_ date-ish that it wouldn't be embarrassing if it turned out to be a non-date? Why didn't Miss Manners cover shit like this? God, to have boobs, stellar knockers like Rosalie's! I could show "tasteful cleavage," and that would be right on the line of date/non-date, like a Gestalt image. _When you look at the cleavage, do you see a rabbit or a duck?_ Boys liked cleavage. A garnish of cleavage could go a long way. You could dress cleavage up or down. "Oh, girls," I said to my sad little chest, "why must you be so sleek and aerodynamic? Would it be too much to ask you to earn your keep?"

I reeled in horror when I realized I'd started addressing my breasts out loud. Who was I becoming? Why was Jasper making me such a _girl_? _Chill the fuck out, woman_. For penance, I would dress modestly. Okay, semi-modestly. All black. But clingy, and with sexy boots. I'd do my best impression of a dour yet hot literature graduate student. Maybe I could be like Audrey Hepburn in the beatnik bar in _Funny Face_. I could gamine with the best of them. I plucked out a tight black turtleneck, miniskirt, and opaque tights. Then I looked at my clock and realized it was only two o'clock. Four hours.

How the hell was I going to occupy myself for four hours? I picked up the new Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of _Crime and Punishment_ I'd been reading on and off for the last year and plunked myself down on the bed, but I was too flustered to focus. In my frenzied state, I couldn't keep all the Russian dudes separate. This was really not the sort of book one could read five minutes at a time over several months. Honestly, how many Petroviches could be in one book? It was seriously beginning to piss me off. Screw reading. Manual labor was what I needed.

I decided to put my clothes away completely, not just shove them back into the drawers as I had earlier in the day. I took each drawer out and dumped its contents on the floor. I sat in the middle of the dingy braided rug and began to sort items by color. No, this time I'd sort by fiber. Yes. And after I sorted by fiber content (and in order of increasing percentages if it were a blend), I could alphabetize by fiber and then by color. That should take me hours, and it would be soothingly monotonous.

I'd separated all the cotton from cotton blend, and all the wool into angora, merino, cashmere. I pulled out the last drawer, my sock drawer, and flipped it over. I yelped when a small wooden box tumbled out onto my foot. Oh no. Now I remembered why I usually shoved my clothes back into the drawers without looking. I needed to keep this box away from me. I hadn't seen the box in at least two years.

The mahogany puzzle box was slightly longer than my hand and a little thicker than a pack of cigarettes. I knew I should have just shoved it back into the drawer where it belonged, but my hands had a life of their own. They slid the lid open, revealing the velvet-lined interior and the little scarlet satin bag inside. Trembling, my hands removed the bag and loosened the drawstring.

I knew I shouldn't keep going. I willed my hands to stop, but they pulled out the beautiful and terrifying cards, my mother's last Tarot deck. They even still smelled a little like her, vanilla and spice. I put my nose right up to the cards and breathed deeply. The olfactory memory made me feel like a little girl again. I could practically hear my mother whispering, "Mary Alice, my love, I'll read your future." She'd fan the cards rapidly and offer me the newly shuffled deck to cut.

We'd be huddled under the blanket of the queen bed we shared, the big camping flashlight awkwardly clamped under my mom's chin as she laid the cards out in the cross spread. I'd be tempted to shriek when I got the Wheel, or Death, or the Hanged Man. I'd want to whoop if I got anything with Cups. I didn't know the meaning of all the cards, but I knew Cups meant love and romance. But scared or excited, I bit my tongue and held my breath, trying to make as little noise as possible. We'd both be in trouble if Grandma found us.

Mom wasn't supposed to touch those cards—Grandma thought they were an abomination and an open invitation to the devil. It was actually the third deck I could remember, because Grandma would immediately burn any decks she found. Mom was more careful by the time she thought I was old enough to have my cards read, and she told me that I never could say anything to Grandma about it. Maybe I should have seen the fear in her eyes; maybe somehow it would have made a difference. But I was young and stupid enough just to be excited to share a secret with my mother. I cherished our evenings together under the covers, as she'd whisper my future to me as I drifted off to sleep, listening to the rain. Our long blonde hair would intertwine on the pillows, and if I looked out of my peripheral vision, I couldn't tell whose hair was whose. We were two of a kind. She was my Queen of Cups. She was my world.

I absentmindedly spread the cards out on the braided rug, beginning to shuffle them. It had been so long, but my hands remembered. They ached to do what was so natural to them. I was halfway through laying out the cards in the fan spread before I realized what I was doing. My heart started racing. Had _they_ seen me? In the daylight I was less afraid of the buzzing, but that didn't mean it couldn't start at any minute. I threw the deck away from me as if an electric current were running through it. Cards flew everywhere. _I'll be good, I'll be good_, I pleaded to no one in particular as I scrambled on my hands and knees to get them back into an orderly stack.

I should have burned the deck in the sink as soon as the buzzing had started a few years ago, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The deck was one of the few things I owned that still contained the essence of my mother. When I'd touch the cards, I could imagine she was there with me. Barely taking in the Hogarth-esque woodcut illustrations, my eyes would flutter across the fanned out cards and eventually roll back in my head. I practically didn't need to see the cards to read their meaning—they _sang_ to me. I just had to be still enough to hear their song.

I reminded myself that Sirens also sang beautifully. I knew the cards should be shut away. I didn't want to invite the darkness back into me. They had no power over me if they were shut away. As I shoved the deck back into the pouch, and the pouch back into the box, I could almost feel my hands resisting. Reburying the box in the back corner of my sock drawer, I imagined them saying, "Please don't take away our precious." I nearly laughed at myself for being so Gollumesque.

The fading light outside reminded me to check the clock on my nightstand. It was just about five o'clock, a safe time to begin to prepare for my … _whatever_ with Jasper. I peeled off my pajama top—_had I really stayed in pajamas all day?—_and quickly dressed. Since I'd showered right after getting home from the Unicorn at four in the morning, I didn't bother showering again. I did begrudgingly put additional product in my hopeless bird's nest of hair to make it look _deliberately_ messy and not as if, for example, I'd lolled about in pajamas for the last twelve hours. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I was so flushed at the mere thought of seeing Jasper again that I forewent the blush, opting only for some tinted lip-gloss. Lipliner and lipstick were out, because in my world, lipliner plus lipstick equaled Date. There was no Gestalt ambiguity with lipliner and lipstick.

Back in my room, I pulled on the one boot I'd found in my closet and began searching for its mate. With the one platform-heeled boot on, I clomped around the perimeter of my bedroom several times like a peg-legged pirate. In desperation, I flopped onto my belly on the floor and peered under the bed. Eureka. Snaking my arm underneath the bed, I caught a corner of the truant boot. As I pulled it out, my eye was drawn to a small rectangle of paper caught beneath the edge of the rug. I must have missed one of the cards in my hurry to sweep them back into the pouch. I snatched it up and saw a familiar engraving of a structure struck by lightning, in flames, men jumping out of its windows:

**Card XVI. The Tower**. Meaning: _The breaking down of an outworn sense of values. A sudden shock that is nevertheless a blessing in disguise. Freedom from old, possibly self-imposed restrictions. _Reversed meaning:_ False accusations, imprisonment, and oppression._(2)

Now if only I knew which way was up.

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(1) The Brothers Grimm, "Rapunzel," in _Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales_ (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993), p. 94.

(2) Jonathan Dee, _Tarot_ (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1998), p. 22.

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**A/N**: I swear that I have other books in my library other than those published by Barnes and Noble Books. Odd coincidence, that. So! Feel like reviewing? That would be A-OK with me. Love ya, mean it.


	3. Gerberas and Crocuses

**A/N: In the Days of Auld Lang Syne now has Edward and Emmett POVs!**

**Okay, for the life of me, I cannot seem to link to them directly, but Edward's is by JayneRulis under "In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Bold as Love," and Emmett's is by Grendelsmother, "In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Attractive Nuisance." HTML FAIL.**

**Check them out, as they are awesome. **

**Thank you for the reviews, and thanks as always to the Rav UUs and Saturday night chat ladies.**

**As always, Stephenie Meyer owns all this hoopijoob.**

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**Chapter 3: Gerberas and Crocuses**

_If I wrote you, you would know me, and you would not write me again_.

_-Dar Williams _[1]

The bus, usually late, pulled up to the stop at the corner right as I left my apartment building. I considered sprinting, but then I thought better of it. I'd factored in the Methuselahn wait time when I'd planned when to leave my place, and I didn't want to seem overly eager by showing up early. But I also knew that if I didn't get on that bus, the next one would come at five minutes to never.

Still, running for the bus seemed somehow pathetic to me. I'd leave it to chance, then. I'd stroll leisurely, and if the bus were still there when I reached the corner, it was the right bus for me. I expected the bus to tear away from the stop right as I reached it, but it waited like an obedient dog. I sighed and clambered up the bus steps. The universe wanted me to appear desperate. Fine.

I tottered to an empty seat as the bus lurched forward. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cool glass window. I couldn't shake the butterflies in my stomach, calm the tingling in my fingers. _Breathe, Alice_. Ack. Ack. Ack. My thoughts vacillated between the mechanics of respiration and my Bill the Cat impression. Ack. Ack. Ack.

Behind my closed eyes an image flashed of the first time I went on the high dive at the community pool the summer I was eight. I'd climbed and climbed, seemingly into the heavens, but when I'd gotten to the edge, I'd frozen. It was one of those thickly hot August days, and I wanted nothing better than to get back into the water. But standing up there with my toes curled around the rough edge of the board, I was paralyzed. I could not make my legs take another step. The sun beat down on my head. The people behind me in line became frustrated and eventually—and rudely—verbal. It was when I heard someone call me a baby that I backed up, took a running start, and leapt off. I immediately regretted it, screaming loudly as I seemed suspended in air for an eternity. Eventually gravity kicked in. The water slapped mercilessly hard against me, and I came up for air with sore legs and a bruised ego. I didn't go up the high dive again that summer.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach as the buildings of downtown Seattle whizzed by. Glancing at my watch, I also grew increasingly worried that I would be too early—I'd die if Jasper thought I was some desperately eager girl. I got off the bus one stop early, hoping to eat some time by walking slowly to the Unicorn. I took the tiniest steps I could, which was about all I could manage anyway in this particular pair of boots. I felt as if I were walking down the Green Mile.

As I approached the Unicorn, I could make out a tall figure already standing in front of the pub. _PleasebeJasper_,_ pleasebeJasper_, I pleaded with the universe. As if on cue, the tall figure spun around. Seeing me, he gave me a smile that I'm embarrassed to say knocked the wind out of me. Praise jebus. Jasper.

All day I'd been trying to remember his face, but we'd talked for such a short time. The bar had been so crowded, my mind so muddled. During the bus ride I'd started to panic that I'd made a huge mistake. Why had I agreed to meet him? What if he looked like Quasimodo? And not the sanitized Disney Quasimodo either, which is saying a lot because the Disney version was still pretty fucking scary.

Looking at his face in the orange glow of the streetlamps, I realized I had been fretting for naught. Jasper was beautiful, almost too beautiful. Certainly too beautiful to be seen with the likes of me. No longer in costume, he wore dark jeans and a brown corduroy jacket. A knit beanie was pulled down far on his head. Tawny wisps peeped out at the edges, and I ached to tug the hat off and bury my nose in his glorious hair. It was strange seeing him without his costume on. It had been fun to imagine that he always wandered about in period dress, my very own Victorian hero. But I was getting ahead of myself.

I swiftly closed the gap between us. I hadn't meant to walk so quickly, but my feet had a life of their own once I'd seen that heart-stopping smile. "You came!" he exclaimed as he saw me approach.

"That's what she said!" I blurted before I could stop myself. Oh god. I was so used to playing crass bar wench to the U-Dub frat guys who'd wander into the bar that it had been reflex. My proximity to the workplace rendered my filter ineffective.

Thankfully, Jasper barked a laugh. When he'd recovered, he said, "I'm going to have to watch my mouth around you, aren't I?"

"That's what SHE … oh crap. Sorry. Sorry." My hands fluttered in apology. I seriously needed to get the fuck out of the immediate Unicorn zone. "Um, do you mind if we head on out? This place does a number on my cranium sometimes."

"Mais oui, mademoiselle," Jasper said, offering me a bright pink gerbera daisy he'd hidden behind his back. My eyes bugged out a little, and I tried hard to hide my smile. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had given me flowers. I didn't know if my grandmother's funeral counted, but either way it was pretty pathetic to think about.

Jasper stuck his arm out. I looked at it blankly and asked, "Is there something wrong with your elbow?"

Jasper shifted his weight from foot to foot and scratched the back of his neck with his other hand. "I was just offering my arm. You know," he added as he continued to work his neck as if it were a deliciously scented scratch-and-sniff sticker, "for warmth. As you may be aware, January is winter in the northern hemisphere, and mammals are warm-blooded creatures."

"Don't you start on me with the lactation and bearing live young. Doesn't exactly put me in the mood for the nomming," I said, sheepishly taking his arm and feeling like a moron for not understanding his simple, kind gesture. "So, where are we headed?"

"Well, Ms. Alice, what are you in the mood for?"

Somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, I could hear strains of mariachi music. "How about Mexican?" I suggested.

"Wow, that's uncanny—I was just thinking about my hankering for tamales," he said, peering into my eyes with kind curiosity.

I winced, too embarrassed even to add a third "That's what she said" to his too easy double entendre. I did not want to be eerily right about anything, especially in front of Jasper. I tried to convince myself that it was just coincidence—after all, how many different genres of food did dudes have cravings for? Wasn't it all just burgers, pizza, and tacos? Now it was my turn to shift uneasily from foot to foot.

Jasper continued to smile warmly and said, "There's this great place at the corner of 4th Avenue and the G.U.C. Parkway—Las Cuentapuertas?"

I racked my brain, trying to remember high school Spanish. "The restaurant is named _The Bill Gates_?"

"Yeah, it was started by a bunch of smartass former Microsoft employees who sold their stock as soon as they were vested to go in the restaurant business. They make their food with sarcasm and love, which really provides the right amount of bite. As a proud Texan, I can't with good conscience say that they are Texas good, but they are pretty good for Seattle."

I patted his arm and said, "Then lay on, JasDuff."

***

Seated in a booth at Las Cuentapuertas, I pretended not to be uneasy hearing the same strains of mariachi music I'd heard in my head outside the Unicorn. I was holding the gerbera daisy Jasper had given me, absentmindedly brushing it across my cheek. Looking at Jasper boldly, I imagined that the soft petals skimming my skin were his lips. _He has no idea what I'm doing_, I thought, and my secret gave me some satisfaction.

Things seemed to be going well. I was still nervous as hell, but Jasper was easygoing and extremely pleasant to look at. The Microsoft nerds also knew how to make a gal feel at ease. The maître d' was a grown-up Milhouse wearing a big sombrero with his plaid shirt and white sneakers. The neatly laminated menus had an altered screenshot of Flying Toasters, except instead of toast, cheese-covered nachos popped fetchingly from the toasters.

I felt as though I were just chatting up a customer at the bar when I asked Jasper, "So, what brings this proud Texan to the Pacific Northwest?"

"The readin', writing, and 'rithmetic," he answered with an exaggerated drawl. Dropping the accent, he said, "I'm getting my PhD now in psychology at U-Dub, but I think I'll stop when I get my M.S. this spring and try to get into med school instead, get my MD, eventually go into psychiatry." He leaned toward me conspiratorially and stage-whispered, "Shrinking minds is no fun unless you get to prescribe drugs too."

Crap! Crap, crap, crap! Somewhere in my head, a Studebaker horn was screaming, "AWOOGA!" Why psychiatry? Why couldn't he be a safe biologist? Or forestry student? Or accountant? Or criminologist, or historian of the serial killer? Or, hells, an actual serial killer?

I took a sip of water and tried to appear calm. "Oh, that's interesting," I said, clamping the straw between my teeth and thinking, _No, actually, it's fucking horrifying_. "How did you get interested in that?"

"I'm not sure. I just like figuring people out, trying to help them work out their problems. I used to mentor kids when I was in college, and so many of them came from such awful, abusive homes—they didn't say as much, but you could just tell. During our afterschool sessions, my goal was to get them to smile, forget themselves, try to figure out if there was anything capital-b-Bad to report. I wanted to save them all. Like, you know how some women become crazy cat ladies? When I'm seventy, I'll probably be, like, a crazy kid lady—uh—man."

He mock-winced, no doubt anticipating some comment at his expense, which I gladly would have given, but I was thrown off-kilter by his casual use of the "c" word. I bristled, "So you think that just because kids have some problems, they're crazy?"

Jasper blanched slightly. "Oh no, sorry. I have to stop talking in shorthand. I meant that I'd be the crazy one, knitting doilies or some shit, surrounded by happy, purring kids pooping in my shoes."

His answer disarmed me, so motherfucking charming, self-deprecating, and sweet. I laughed, the brain "AWOOGA" fading in the distance, the Studebaker of Panic back in its garage. I narrowed my eyes and said, "I'm sure you just want some minions for your evil child army. 'Go, my pretties! Fetch me a case of SoCo!'"

"That's not _un_true," he admitted.

A waiter wearing a shirt emblazoned with the MS Word paperclip (the paperclip hilariously mustachioed and valiantly wearing a poncho despite not having limbs) approached our table with my fish tacos and Jasper's tamale platter. "Hi! It looks like you are about to eat Mexican food," the waiter said, waggling his eyebrows like the paperclip that had filled me with so much murderous rage in college. "You may want to know that the plates are very hot. Enjoy!" I had to admit, the Microsoft nerds had really thought this theme through.

"So," Jasper began after swallowing his forkful of rice and refried beans, "are you at U- Dub too? You look so familiar."

"Me? Oh no," I said, puzzled. "I went to Reed. You ever spend time in Oregon?"

"Huh, no." Jasper's brow furrowed, again looking like he was trying to do long division. "Do you go to Ursa Major?"

"What the hell is that? Build-a-Bear for Latinate plushies?"

"Ha, I'll take that as a no. That's my buddy Emmett's gym, but Build-a-Bear for Latinate plushies is pretty accurate, actually. Goddamn, you look so familiar to me." Seeming to give up for the moment, he shrugged and continued to tuck into his dinner.

Maybe that was all I was to him, some puzzle for him to figure out. Maybe when he realized who I reminded him of, he'd be done with me. My heart felt heavy. I stared at the refried beans, using my fork to draw a little sad face in them. I glanced up occasionally to watch him enjoy his food, but my heart was no longer into eating, even though the fish tacos were pretty fucking good. Suddenly I wanted to be home, curled up in bed. Even the buzzing was better than cement-heart. This was my fault for imagining that things could be different with this guy. _I told you_, the voice in my head scolded.

The voice was right. What did I possibly have to offer anyone? Sure, I got plenty of attention at the Unicorn from guys wanting to grab some goth pixie ass, but they just saw me as a fuckbeast, and I could have been anybody. Any fuckbeast. And that's the only attention I'd ever get. And the only way I'd get even that attention was by pretending that I wasn't so messed up inside. Maybe I should just take what I could get. Cut my losses. Let them play grab ass. Oh, I wanted to go home. _Don't you fucking cry in front of him. Just don't_.

I felt as if I were at a crossroads. I could easily pull on the mask and pretend nothing was wrong, continue to shoot the shit. Or I could just … feel whatever it was I wanted to feel. I was suddenly so tired of hiding. But it was game over if he saw me cry. So I plastered on a smile and looked up.

Jasper had stopped eating—who knew how long ago?—and was studying my face. Great, still trying to figure me out. "Hey, are you okay?"

"What? Yeah, of course!" I chirped. "Good food, good folks, good fucking MS Word paperclip—what's not to love?"

To my surprise, he put his fork down, stood up, and slid next to me on my side of the booth. "You're too far away," he said. He continued to gaze at me, his blue eyes pale as the February sky before a snowstorm. He reached his hand up to my face but hesitated before actually touching me. His hand frozen in the air, I felt as if time had stopped. I was frozen too, inside, frozen in that moment before being touched, like a crocus bulb waiting under the snow in an eternal winter, a Narnia-under-the-White-Witch kind of winter. Waiting for a spring that would never come. My lip quivered, and it took everything in me to hold back the floodgates of tears.

Something gently brushed my cheek, like the gerbera daisy petals, but warm, real. Oh. Oh, hi. Hi, Jasper's fingers. He leaned in close to me, and my heart skipped a beat, thinking he might actually kiss me. But no.

Jasper whispered in my ear, "Alice, I don't know how I can get you to trust me, or even if you should, but you don't need to pretend around me. It's okay to be sad if you want."

I shivered at his proximity, the memory of his fleeting touch, his breath on my neck. He was wrong; of course it wasn't okay to be sad. But I loved him a little for lying to me.

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[1] Dar Williams, "If I Wrote You," _End of the Summer_ (Razor and Tie, 1997).


	4. More Than Just Malice

**A/N: **Thanks for two of the three R's: Readin' and writin'. We'll work on the 'rithmetic some other time. Love as ever to the **Rav UUs** and **Saturday night chat ladies**. Also, last time I meant to give a shoutout to my friend **Vaginal Rim Nuts **(an anagram of her name) for pointing out that "Feisty Y. Beden" can anagram to **Beefy Destiny**. I think that sounds about right.

Be sure to check out the other POVs of this story, **Jayne Rulis**'s "In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Bold as Love" (Edward) and **Grendelsmother**'s "In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Attractive Nuisance" (Emmett).

**Stephenie Meyer** owns _Twilight_ and probably lots of other nice things she was able to buy because of _Twilight_.

Signing off, this is **Beefy Destiny**.

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**Chapter 4: More Than Just Malice**

_But then what if he knew who you were, when you know that you're not what he thinks that he wants? And then what if you are what a prince would envision?_

_- Sondheim and Lapine_[1]

When the check came, I fumbled for my wallet in the is-this-a-date litmus test, but Jasper beat me to the punch, gracefully sliding a credit card into the bill folder. He was still sitting next to me in the booth, close but not touching. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, the space between the outlines of our bodies crackling with energy. I ached to touch him, to lean against him the way we had at the bar less than twenty-four hours before. But I didn't dare. There was that high dive again, and I was too chicken to take a running leap.

I did take note that he used the vinyl sleeve in the bill folder for his credit card. Some would think it was OCD that the credit card sleeve mattered to me so much, but it just made me sad when it wasn't used. That sleeve was created for one thing: to hold the credit card in place and in a way that it was easy for the server to tell that the bill was ready to be paid, but so many people just ignored it, throwing their card into the folder sloppily as if the sleeve didn't even exist. Or worse: existed but didn't matter.

The grabbing-the-bill-first maneuver wasn't enough for me to be convinced about the results of the date litmus test, so I opened my wallet and smiled awkwardly, asking, "So, uh, how much should I put in?"

Jasper held up his hand. "Proud Texan, remember? No beautiful lady pays when she's with me."

It was the second time in as many days that he'd called me beautiful, and I filed it away in my heart. _Remember how this feels_, I commanded myself. _Remember that sometimes you can be beautiful_. I didn't really believe it, but I hoped if I could memorize the feeling, I could condition myself to believe, like muscle memory.

Even in the face of empirical evidence A (does second party pay?) and empirical evidence B (does second party refuse repayment?) of the is-this-a-date litmus test, I remained skeptical that this was a date to him. Even Jasper's calling me "beautiful" didn't convince me. _He's just a gentleman_, I tried to convince myself. _He would say that to anyone, even Eleanor Roosevelt_.

He wanted me to trust him. He'd said so when he slid next to me, whispered it right in my ear. A very tiny, quiet part of me wanted so much to believe him, but the part of me that remembered the jeering, the humiliation, that did anything to protect me from such cruelty, squelched that quiet version of me. _Safety above all other things_, my hard exterior reminded me.

But, but, but. Had he done anything so far to make me not trust him? No, he had been perfectly lovely. But what if he were just biding his time? Maybe he and his two buddies from the bar were just trying to play some trick on me. Maybe it was just a game to them: "Pin the Tail on the Pixie Goth Bartender." It wouldn't be the first time I'd been misled.

***

It was in the first few months after the Incident senior year, when I foolishly thought I could get on with my life, that people liked me for me, and it wouldn't matter that my home life had fallen apart. Not that it was anyone's business. Unfortunately, when your home life was falling apart because your mother _accidentally_ brutally attacked one of your teachers, one of the most popular teachers at the school, it kind of _became_ everyone's business.

But I was still hopeful. I had wonderful friends; they'd stand by me, wouldn't they? They would be able to separate me from my family, right? See me as an individual? My right arm was encircled with a multitude of handmade bracelets, each complicated bit of knotted embroidery floss a tangible evidence of friendship. We'd all made them for each other, my best girlfriends and I, back in junior high, and we still wore them, all through high school. We wore them until they were faded and frayed. If one happened to unravel completely and break off, we'd make another, laughing with each other at the lunch table as we tried to remember how to make the knots.

I hadn't expected them to fall away from me one by one, until it was painfully obvious that I was no longer welcome at their table. _Their_ table now, not _ours_. Certainly not _mine_. At first, there were the shifts in body when I'd approach, the careful, yet deliberately casual-seeming placement of backpacks and coats on vacant chairs. Then, gradually, the animated whispering that stopped the minute I was in earshot. And eventually, pointed stares, folded arms, the new alpha female spitting, "No one wants to see you here, _Mary Alice Brandon_," using my full name like an insult.

The bits of string that I'd once thought were a contract for everlasting friendship felt like lead on my wrist; they may as well have been made of thorns. I ripped each and every one off in the girls' bathroom during lunch one day, tugging them so hard to rip the threads that I broke the capillaries under my skin. The pain was penance for being so naïve, the red rings on my skin a reminder that friendship was merely delayed suffering. I dropped the frayed threads in the feminine hygiene disposal bin in the stall. It seemed fitting, throwing away these tokens of false friendship in the receptacle reserved for the worst parts of growing up and becoming a woman, the discarded threads sopping up the leavings of cramps and misery and embarrassment.

You'd think I would have been smart enough then to distrust everyone, but I thought, well, maybe it was just the girls who were unforgiving. It was such a shock to my system—I was used to being liked by everyone, invited to parties, hanging out at the mall, having leads in drama club productions. How could that all change overnight?

So when Mitchell Matthews from drama club started hanging out with me in the hallway, asking me to the movies, I was flattered. Frankly, I was starved for attention. I wasn't sure how I felt about him, but it was better than being alone. I let him feel me up in the backseat of his mom's Nissan, because if he groped me, at least I knew I was worth touching. I'd reek of Drakkar Noir when I'd slink back into the house before curfew. If my grandmother suspected wrongdoing, she looked the other way. I thought I was okay with it. It didn't feel bad; it just didn't feel like anything. But I didn't know—how could I?—what Mitchell and his buddies had in store.

***

_Give it up! _the tiny, quiet part of me surprised me by shouting. _That was like ten fucking years ago. When are you going to get over it? _I was irritated, but still impressed and a little proud of the boldness of that little voice.

"Earth to Alice," said Jasper, not unkindly. He'd already signed the receipt. I noticed he tipped (generously) in cash, which also made me love him a little more, as if using the credit card sleeve hadn't made me smitten enough.

I still hadn't said anything to him since he'd whispered in my ear. I didn't know what to say. I could have pretended nothing was wrong, but he seemed to be able to see through me when I put on my mask. I could have just been sad, but I knew he didn't really want to see that, even if he said it was okay, even if he really believed that it was okay. So I had said nothing, had just pushed my food around the plate morosely. _You're a winner, Alice; you're a winner_.

But if Jasper were annoyed or uncomfortable, he didn't let it show. He'd told me stories about growing up in Texas, the New Year's party at his parents' house the first time he was allowed to stay up past midnight. How he'd heard popping sounds at the stroke of twelve, and how he'd rushed outside to see the fireworks. How his mom and dad had chuckled, breaking it to him that the popping was of folks shooting their guns off into the sky to bring in the New Year. He didn't seem horrified though, just amused. I could tell he adored Texas unconditionally. Lucky state.

"Do you want to get ice cream?" Jasper suddenly asked, turning to me. It was hard to think straight now that our knees were touching. Who knew that skin stretched on bone through layers of jeans and opaque tights could feel so intimate? My mind momentarily went to jelly as I tried to parse the meaning of his words. Get. Ice. Cream. What the fuck is ice cream? _Knees on knees. KNEES_ _oh my god knees_. _Kneesonknees_.

I meant to say something resembling, "Sure! That sounds great!" but what came out was more like, "_Mumble knees mumble_ yes, knees."

"Come again?" said Jasper, snaking his arm around me _OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD_ to bring his ear closer to my head.

"I said, 'Yes, please,'" I managed to squeak out. Meep. Good save.

Jasper helped me into my coat on the way out of Las Cuentapuertas. As we left the Microsoft nerds, he held his arm out again, and this time I did not hesitate to loop my arm through his. I leaned my head happily against his arm, breathing in the scent of his corduroy jacket.

I suddenly felt giddy walking with him in downtown Seattle. I wanted to shout from the rooftops, "I AM WALKING ARM IN ARM WITH JASPER … SOMEONE, AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS!" Realizing I wouldn't even know what to shout, I said, "Heya, we have dipped from the same bowl of salsa, yet I do not know your last name."

Ever the gentleman, Jasper stopped walking, took off his knit cap, and bowed, saying, "Jasper Whitlock. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

I gave a goofy curtsey and said, "Alice Prynne." Part of me wanted to tell him my real name, but I knew it would be foolishness. I'd dropped my first name and changed my last from Brandon to Prynne when I applied to Reed, changed it to my absent father's name. The irony that my runaway father's surname was the same as a literary heroine who had borne a child out of wedlock had not escaped me, but it was still better to suffer the inevitable _Scarlet Letter_ jokes than to worry that someone would recognize me from my hometown.

I had wanted a fresh start. And it had worked. I got to spend four blissful years away from anyone I knew from Olympia, had been able to reinvent myself as a fun yet cynical sparkplug, and no one had questioned it. They'd accepted me, and I almost forgot who I really was inside. It was so easy to play the role. Well, so easy for a time. As Cinderella said in _Into the Woods_, "It's fun to deceive / When you know you can leave."[2] By the end of college, I was beginning to understand that I _could never leave_. When I realized that I was signing on to play this role for life, harboring such a secret quickly grew to feel like a burden, a curse, a prison.

Jasper guided me to Gelatiamo, a darling little gelato shop a few blocks away on Third Avenue. It smelled amazing as soon as we stepped through the doors, sweet but just shy of cloying. This is what I imagined Willy Wonka's factory to smell like. The colorful bins of gelato reminded me of a new box of Crayola 64s. We queued up, still arm in arm, even though we were now no longer in transit.

I could get used to this.

I ordered a small _fragola_, while Jasper opted for the _pistacchio_. Funny how putting things in Italian made _strawberry_ and _pistachio_ sound totally exotic. He insisted on paying, again, even though I was hoping to treat him to dessert. Damn his Southern gentility. We sat at a small sweetheart table by the storefront with our stainless steel dessert dishes. I felt strangely contented, and I smiled dreamily into my gelato.

If Jasper noticed my change of mood, he didn't let on. He didn't push his earlier point, and the strange thing was that I just felt better. In this moment, I didn't feel filled with blackness. Maybe it would last a day, an hour, just a moment. Maybe it would be gone in the blink of an eye. But for that moment, licking gelato thoughtfully off my spoon I was actually … happy. And it felt oddly uncomplicated. I wasn't second-guessing it. In my mind, I was standing in the moment with bare feet, toes curling into the warm earth, my arms raised high and soaking up the sunshine, breathing it all in.

I don't know how long I sat there grinning like an idiot, but I was jolted back to reality when Jasper wove his fingers into mine under the table. I could feel my cheeks flushing, but I simply no longer gave a damn. My heart was careening against my ribcage as I tried to act casual and continue to eat my gelato. Jasper, I noticed, was now eating his gelato with his non-dominant hand, and he was having some difficulty, the steel ice cream dish sliding across the table. It reminded me of a dog nosing his food bowl all across a slick kitchen floor. But there was no way I was going to let him off the hook and lose this moment by breaking physical contact.

Jasper made a few more attempts to scoop his _pistacchio _onto his spoon with his right hand. Neither of us mentioned the fact that we were holding hands under the table. That there was a gigantic pink elephant under the sweetheart table at Gelatiamo. I was afraid that if I acknowledged the moment, it would melt away. And I'm sure Jasper was afraid I'd be freaking out inside about his holding my hand, and I didn't want him to let go.

So I took a deep breath, reached for his spoon, and said, "May I?"

"Of course, mi gelato es su gelato," he said, smiling and pushing his dish toward me.

He thought I wanted a bite of his. Nothing was going to be easy, was it? It was a dumb idea, and I would lose my nerve if I had to state my intentions out loud. I shook my head. I would just have to show him, then. I gritted my teeth and took a little spoonful of gelato, bringing it up to his lips. Jasper looked at me for a second in a sort of stunned "Are you serious?" expression, but then gave my hand a little squeeze and cheerfully opened his mouth.

I fed him the last few bites of his gelato, my heart fluttering, my cheeks on fire, and I never let go of his hand under the table. He didn't eat off the spoon in a porn star fashion with excessive tongue and moaning, for which I was grateful, but I was still incredibly embarrassed and, frankly, kind of turned on. When he'd finished his gelato, I quickly returned his spoon to the dish with a clatter. He brought our hands up to his mouth and … just kissed my fingertips. He did it so quickly that I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it, if he'd actually just brushed my fingertips across his mouth. "Thanks," he said with a grin. "Can I walk you back to where you need to go?"

I panicked briefly, considering telling him where I lived. But I decided to stay vague. "I just need to get to the bus stop on Broadway." If Jasper was disappointed, he didn't let it show on his face.

As we stood up, I reluctantly let go of his hand. Goodbye, perfect moment. We exited the shop silently. Every fiber of me wanted to take his hand again, but I was too chickenshit. I noticed with some sadness that Jasper seemed preoccupied and didn't offer me his arm again. We walked slowly down Third Avenue, the vacant space between our bodies again crackling with energy. I noticed, when I furtively glanced at his hand, that his fingers twitched slightly.

We arrived at the bus stop far too quickly, before I'd mustered up the guts to reach for him. I had just opened my mouth to tell him he could head back to wherever it was he was going, to give him an out. But he spoke first. "Before you even say anything, I am waiting for your bus to arrive before I leave you," he said. He pointed to himself and said, "Texan."

"If you insist," I said, pretending to be apathetic. I didn't want him to know how pleased I was that he wanted to stay.

"It's not that I think you are incapable of waiting for the bus on your own—I mean, you look like you could totally pull a Gillooly if someone cornered you"—he smiled to make sure I knew he was joking—"but just, for me, I'd like to know that you are safe."

He wanted me to be safe. I was touched by the sentiment, but then I realized I probably was reading too much into that. Once again, he'd probably want Eleanor Roosevelt to be safe too. Stupid Eleanor Roosevelt. _He's just a nice guy. It has nothing to do with you_.

Twenty-five minutes later, and the bus still hadn't come by. That was more like it—the deadbeat bus. My world felt normal again, at least my version of normal. Jasper never complained, though, continuing to make small talk. "Hey, check this out," he suddenly said, making a hilarious fish face.

"Um, what exactly am I looking at, Nemo?"

"Check it, check it." He furrowed his brow in concentration and exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the cold air. He did a few short puffs and long puffs in a pattern I could not decipher.

"Seriously, what the fuck is that?"

"I'm trying to send a smoke signal to the bus dispatch that says, 'Hurry your pokey puppy ass up; my Alice is cold.'"

_His_ Alice. Yeah. I liked the sound of that. Would he say "My Eleanor Roosevelt"? Maybe, if she were waiting for the bus in the cold, and he couldn't go home until he saw her safely on it. He was right, though; I _was_ getting kind of cold. I began stamping my feet and blowing on my hands.

"Oh, baby, your teeth are chattering." Jasper reached for my hands, clucking like a mother hen when he touched them. "Your hands are frozen!" He started rubbing them in his to warm them up. _Jasper friction, oh my god, friction from Jasper_. Continuing to rub my hands rapidly, he brought them up to his mouth and breathed on them. Feeling his breath on me, my body overtook my mind, and despite my determination to appear cool and indifferent, I leaned sideways into him, resting my forehead against his chest. Reacting to the shift in my body, he dropped my hands and wrapped his arms around me. My teeth were really chattering now, but it had nothing to do with being cold.

I could feel his chin resting on the top of my head, his arms around my back, his whole warm body pressed against me. This felt so right, my heart so quiet. He felt like _home_.

As if on cue, I could hear the truant bus rumbling to the stop. _Thank you, Metro Transit. Thank you ever so much. It is just so fucking WONDERFUL to share this moment with you_. Jasper squeezed me extra hard and gently laid a kiss on my forehead, right at my hairline. I refrained from asking myself if he would do the same to Eleanor Roosevelt.

"Hey, smiley girl," he said, as he looked down at me. Huh, I guess I _was_ rather smiley at the moment. He hugged me again and murmured into my hair, "So can we do this again soon?"

"Yes, please," I answered, closing my eyes and burrowing into his chest a little more and wondering if by "this" he meant the hug or just hanging out.

"How should I find you?"

"I'm at the Unicorn every night except Monday, 7 to 2, so just come by while I'm working." _Oh, fuck it_. I took a purple felt-tip pen out of my satchel. "Give me your hand," I commanded.

"Okay," he said, puzzled but obedient.

I took his hand, trying to memorize in that instant the feel of his calloused fingers. With my other hand, I uncapped the pen, gripped the cap in my teeth, and then wrote my cell phone number carefully across his palm.

"Hey, that tickles," he said, pretending to be annoyed but clearly amused.

Once I put my pen away, I ran for the bus. I raced up the bus steps, patting my jacket pocket for my monthly bus pass. Before the bus doors swished shut behind me, I poked my head out and shouted, "Goodnight, sweet Whitlock!"

I almost didn't need to look back to know that he'd be bowing deeply in response, hat in hand, but as the bus lurched forward, I still watched through the driver's side mirror until his reflection disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

[1] Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, "On the Steps of the Palace," _Into the Woods_ (1986).

[2] Ibid.

* * *

**A/N: **Eleanor Roosevelt would leave a review. Just sayin'.


	5. Light of the Dark Black Night

**A/N:** Nothing much to say here, but I love you guys. That is all. Shoutout to the Rav UUs and Saturday night chat. Check out the other POVs of _In the Days of Auld Lang Syne_. Don't forget to tip your waitress on the way out.

Standard disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer, I admit you own all this, so don't sue me, kthxbai.

* * *

**Chapter 5: Light of the Dark Black Night**

_Oh! come dolci scendono le sue lusinghe al core_.

- _Giacosa and Illica_[1]

I stopped at the nasty Safeway on my way home for milk and cereal. After my evening with Jasper, I was probably walking a few inches off of the ground, and I had no idea what food items I was putting into my basket. I could barely feel my arms or legs—they felt anesthetized with euphoria. I somehow emerged from the Safeway with a couple of cans of cat food, remembering only as I walked out the automatic doors that I didn't have a cat. That was all right; I'd give them to Mrs. Fitzsimmons, my elderly neighbor. She had trouble getting around since breaking her hip last year, and I often brought her groceries in exchange for letting me borrow her car every week. She didn't ask me to, but it was the least I could do.

She had been so kind to me when I moved here, bringing by a plate of inedible homemade cookies—her eyesight was failing, and she'd had a mishap with the salt—and offering me a set of spare keys to her ancient, boat-like Chrysler Lebaron. "We're both alone," she'd said, gripping my hand almost painfully. I hadn't even said more than hello and thank you, so I'm not sure how she knew that. Maybe she was just a doddering old fool. Maybe she would have said that to any young single woman moving into our austere apartment complex. "It's just me and Edgar Allen Poe," she'd said. I was a little confused until she dug around her little granny purse to produce a creased photograph of a skinny, bewildered black cat.

We liked to have tea once a week. We used Mrs. Fitzsimmons' teacups and living room, but I put myself in charge of measuring Earl Grey leaves into the tea press and providing the cookies, not trusting the sweet woman around a stove. It was nothing fancy, just bags of Pepperidge Farms Milano and Brussels. Edgar Allen Poe would circle my ankles expectantly while I waited for the tea to steep, and once it was ready, I'd give him a saucer of much-weakened tea with lots of cream and sugar. I'd read somewhere that most cats are lactose intolerant, but Edgar Allen Poe had clearly not read the same articles, or perhaps just turned his moist little kitty nose up at science, the scamp.

I loved the delicate bone china cups—"from my trousseau!" Mrs. Fitzsimmons crowed the first time she brought them out—with their pattern of red roses and wild vines curled into heart shapes around the rims. Some days Mrs. Fitzsimmons insisted we wear hats, and she'd make me bring out stacks of hatboxes from her hallway closet, all smelling rather strongly of mothballs. She must have been a firecracker in her day, decked out to the nines in these ostrich feathers, demi-veils, and little stuffed birds.

***

Entering my dark apartment, I threw my keys onto the floor and felt around for the light switch. I unzipped my boots, kicking them off and pointing and flexing my stockinged feet a few times. I put away the groceries, stacking the cans of Fancy Feast on the kitchen counter. Edgar Allen Poe didn't get a lot of canned food, mostly kibble, so he'd be happy about my Jasper-induced scatterbrain.

Jasper. Oh, and there were the butterflies again. Earlier today when I'd been preparing for our—I thought I could say it now with some certainty—_date_, they'd been a nuisance, but now it was like a good kind of excitement. I felt _alive_, on the precipice of something wonderful. The flutters reminded me now of Monarch butterflies beating their wings majestically, like a nature special filmed directly in my belly. I could almost hear the National Geographic fanfare start up: ba dum ba DA dum, ba dum ba DA DA dum ba dum DUM.

I plunked myself on the couch and held my hands to my cheeks, flushing at the memory of his arms wrapped around me, his chin on my head, the smell of his jacket. What would have happened if the bus hadn't arrived just then? Would we have stood there the whole time? Would we be standing there still? Or would he have tried to kiss me? There was no use in dwelling on it, I supposed. I sighed and flopped onto my back, stretching my arms above my head.

I was too wired to try to sleep, and it was still early, at least to this bartender. I just lay there on the sofa, replaying little bits of the evening over and over again, willing myself to remember, willing myself to believe that he was at least a little interested in me. I closed my eyes and tried to rebuild his face from the little details, the inquisitive eyes, the mop of hair, the little crinkles that appeared when he smiled. I smiled back at imaginary Jasper. Suddenly his face morphed in my mind, and it was mocking, cruel, sneering. His lip curled over his teeth in disgust, and I could hear rough, unkind laughter. My eyelids flew open, and I sat up, gasping and clutching my chest. I pounded my fists on the sofa. _Why_ did my brain do this to me? Why did it try to rob me of these few moments of perfection?

_That's not Jasper; he'd never …_ I pleaded with myself.

A haughty voice in me scoffed. _Please. Do you even know him at all? Why do you think he'd be any different than the others?_

_I don't_, I admitted. _But I don't care. I don't. I just … he's just different, okay? I feel it. I know it._

Laughter in the back of my head. _You don't know anything. Just you wait; you'll see_.

I was about to throw a cushion across the room when I heard strains of the Dandy Warhols' "We Used to be Friends" coming from my satchel. I leaped to my feet, digging through the bag to get to my phone. It was a 206 number, Seattle, but not one of my contacts. Dare I hope? No, but it was ridiculous. There was no reason he'd be calling now—we were together not even an hour ago. Yet, my heart thudded and lurched, and my hands shook, nearly sending the phone flying as I flipped it open.

"Hello?" I squeaked. I rolled my eyes at my supreme uncoolness. Why couldn't I answer the phone like Kathleen Turner?

"Hey, Alice?" It was a male voice. Promising.

"Yes?" I said cautiously.

"Hey, hi! This is Jasper. You may remember me from such events as this evening's dinner."

The boy certainly knew how to make me smile. "Let me think," I said, sitting down on the couch with my feet tucked under me. "I had a lot of dinners this evening. Which guy were you?"

"Uh, the _awesome_ one?" he said in mock-offense.

"Hmm, you'll need to be a little more specific than that." I didn't know why I was giving him such a hard time, but I kind of suspected he was enjoying it.

"The awesome one who was _awesome_?" he clarified.

I couldn't keep up the act. I laughed. "Hey," I said warmly. "So what's up?" I kind of wished I still had a landline and an old school corded phone so I could twirl the coil around my fingers. I had a lot of nervous energy.

"Nothing. Just that this awesome guy who is awesome wanted to make sure you got home all right."

"Yeah, I got home about twenty minutes ago, thanks. I'm really sorry you had to wait so long." I _was _sorry he'd had to wait so long in the cold, but I wasn't at all sorry that he'd chosen to wait with me.

"I would have waited all night if I had to," Jasper said resolutely.

"Yes, yes, proud Texan, I know," I said, shooing away Eleanor Roosevelt from my mind.

"It's not just that," Jasper began. I could feel a change in energy in his voice and, subsequently, all around me. It was as if someone had taken the tension-o-stat and cranked it to eleventy. "I know this goes against _The Rules_, but fuck it," he said.

I was dying to know if he'd actually read _The Rules_, but I dared not interrupt him. I bit my tongue and clutched the throw cushion to my chest.

He continued, "I know I'm supposed to wait, what—seventy-two hours?—before calling, but I say fuck that. I'm going to put it all on the table. I like you, and I'd like to hang out with you as much as you'll let me without my looking pathetic or stalkery."

It was a good thing I was already sitting down, because my knees would have given way. He wanted to spend as much time with me as I'd let him. Still, though he said he was putting it all on the table, "like you" and "hang out" didn't sound like formal declarations of intent. _Don't get greedy, Alice. Take what you can get._

"I could allow that," I said. My heart was beating so hard that you could probably have taken my pulse from my earlobe. Everything was pulsing.

"Excellent," said Jasper, sounding a little relieved.

I couldn't resist. "Not so fast. I said I _could_ allow that, but first I need to know why on earth you read _The Rules_."

"Intro psych in undergrad, 'self-help book' assignment," he answered, sounding rather well-rehearsed, as if he'd had to make this explanation countless other times. "Also, I'd been dying to read the book but was afraid to be seen buying it from the college bookstore. At least now I had an excuse and a syllabus to wave if I ran into some cute girl."

I cringed a little, unreasonably jealous, hearing about potential cute girls in his past. _Ridiculous_.

Jasper continued, "Anyway, I wanted to figure out if the ladies were completely uninterested or if they actually _were_ interested but trying not to show it. You know, reverse-engineering our encounters."

"Like using a field guide? The _Audubon Society Field Guide to College Girls_?"

"Ha, I guess so. It didn't work at all anyway," he chuckled. "I would have been better off using one of those origami fortune tellers from grade school or throwing them a note that said, 'DO YOU LIKE ME? CIRCLE YES / NO.' So was my answer satisfactory? Do I pass the test?"

"Hmm," I said, strolling over to my bed and curling onto my side. "You gained points for your having a course-related excuse, but I'm afraid even admitting that you know what an origami fortune teller is costs you those points you gained plus an additional ten from the East German judge. But since I'm feeling generous this evening, I'll overlook that."

He sounded at ease when he said, "What a relief! So what do you want to do? I'd you invite you over here, but I think it's a little early for you to come over for Pringles and Grand Theft Auto since Emmett seems to think our living room is a clothing-optional zone. I love the guy, but I don't want to subject you to that until I know you won't run screaming from me."

There was so much information in his statement, but what I read into the most was the hope in his voice that I'd be around for a long time. Before I could consider the possibilities, my head was suddenly clouded with images of an irate and savage Charlton Heston, and I murmured through my brain fog, "Damn dirty ape?"

Jasper laughed sharply. "Oh, he is, he is. But hey, that reminds me," Jasper said, sounding excited. "Have you ever been to the Sci-Fi Museum? I hear they've got cool shit from _Planet of the Apes_. I've been meaning to go for ages, but I never think of it when I have the time to go."

I curled up more tightly on my side. Crap, I had done it again, seen into Jasper's mind, and, worse, voiced it out loud. But Jasper seemed to think it was coincidence, a clever quip about his buddy Emmett. I was fortunate that his friend was simian enough in nature for the comment to fit. "Oh, that sounds great!" I said, trying to sound more like a normal girl.

We made plans to meet at the Space Needle the next afternoon. Then came the awkward part of the conversation where the business part was done with. I wanted to keep talking to him forever, but I didn't have anything to say.

"So, do you need to get to bed soon?" Jasper asked.

Was this a polite way of nudging me to get off the phone? "No, I'm still kind of wired anyway. I don't usually go to bed until after 3 on most days." And I didn't like lying in bed too long, so I put off bed as long as possible, until I was nodding off on my feet and guaranteed to be asleep almost as my head hit the pillow. But I didn't mention that. This was the part of the evening where I tried to read or knit or _anything_ to keep my mind occupied. Busywork. Alphabetizing my books, scrubbing out the oven. Anything to avoid lying in bed with my heart racing, hoping that the sleep would get me before the buzzing. _That's when the devil takes you_, I could hear my grandmother saying. I shivered.

"Do you mind keeping me company?" Jasper asked.

"Of course not," I said, scratching my itchy legs. I could hear some faint music in the background. "What are you listening to?" I asked.

"Eh, nothing," he said, the music abruptly stopping. "I was just fiddling with my guitar." Ah, guitar—that explained his calloused fingers. I missed his hands already.

"It's pretty," I said. "I thought it was a recording. What were you playing?"

"Nothing in particular; just dicking around like I always do."

I sat up and considered removing my tights. "Well, it sounds pretty, dicking around or no."

We just fell into easy conversation about guitar and music and self-taught vs. formal training. I told him about the summer I tried to teach myself guitar but gave up because every chord I played, aside from E7, sounded like "_THWOCK_." He talked of taking a few years of classical guitar lessons back in junior high, but getting annoyed and quitting when he realized he preferred picking out songs by ear. While we talked, I gradually peeled off my layers, first shimmying out of my tights. Once they lay in a puddle by my laundry basket, I pulled on my pajama pants clumsily with my free hand. When I pulled my turtleneck over my head, I got hopelessly tangled up with my phone. Perhaps not having an old school phone then was a hidden blessing. I would probably have accidentally choked myself.

"Whoa, what's going on in there? Are you inside a linen closet or something?"

"Hold, please," I yelled after throwing the phone on the bed to untangle myself. "I was just getting into my pajamas."

"I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but that's kind of hot," Jasper said. I could hear strumming again.

I laughed flatly. "Believe me, there's nothing hot about it, unless you have some sort of weird flannel fetish."

"Guilty as charged!" he singsonged. I didn't need to see him to know he was smirking impishly.

I didn't know if I were just coming down off my earlier high, or being lulled by Jasper's soothing voice, but suddenly I was _beat_. I got under the covers and laid my head down on the pillow with the phone directly under my ear. I yawned, I hoped not too audibly.

"Oh, baby, are you tired?" I silently thanked the universe that he wasn't one of those tools who said, "I'm sorry, are we _boring_ you?" in a sad, passive-aggressive attempt to be funny. Just, _shut up_, _that guy_.

"No," I said, yawning simultaneously. Damn it.

"Baby, you sound tired. Maybe you should get to bed. Don't stay up on my account."

"Already there," I said, stifling another yawn. The hell?

"Good," he said, picking out a familiar tune on the guitar. To my surprise, he started singing in a gravelly yet sweet baritone: "_Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise_."[2]

I didn't know if he'd chosen the song for me, or if the song had already been in his head. Either way, I smiled serenely, already half asleep, already feeling as if I were soaring into the sky, weightless and unencumbered.

I yawned, this time most definitely audible. "I don't know how long I can stay awake," I apologized, "but promise me you'll finish the song, okay?"

Jasper stopped singing to play an instrumental verse and said, "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, a Jasper is faithful, one hundred percent."

Sleepier and less guarded by the minute, I mumbled, "You're lovely."

As I drifted off, I heard Jasper continue to sing, "_Take these sunken eyes and learn to see. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free_."[3]

* * *

[1] Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, _La Bohème_ (Puccini, 1896). "Oh! How sweet his flatteries fall on my heart."

[2] The Beatles, "Blackbird," _The White Album_, 1968.

[3] Ibid.

* * *

**A/N:** And there you have it. More Alice background to come in the next chapter. Also, Horton would leave a review, because he is cool like that.


	6. The Queen of Cups

**A/N: Your comments are awesome. Thanks for reading! Here's that 'rithmetic I was promising you: If a Silver Volvo leaves Forks, Washington, at 6PM traveling at 80mph, and a gang of unsavory characters exits a bar in Port Angeles at 6:45PM at a walking speed of 4mph, what time will they collide, assuming that the gang walks in Brownian motion and the driver of the Volvo is a vampire who can read minds?**

**Love as always to the Rav UUs and Saturday night chat.**

**Standard disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer, don't sue my ass.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Queen of Cups**

_You see I'm afraid I'll always be still coming out of my mother upside down._

_-Tori Amos_[1]

_It's Monday night, and I'm driving down I-90 East, the way I always do on Monday night. I'm crossing over the Lake Washington Bridge. Mrs. Fitzsimmons' Chrysler LeBaron smells of stale air freshener and old cigarette smoke, and I can barely see over the dashboard. I always feel like Kilroy when I drive the LeBaron, imagining I am invisible to someone looking through the windshield save for the top of my head, the tip of my nose, and my hands at ten and two on the wheel. It comforts me to think of this Kilroy version of me next to the words: __**Alice was here**__. I say it to myself as the car rumbles and thumps across the bridge joints rhythmically. __**Alice was here. Alice was here. Alice was here.**_

_They didn't design cars in the 70s for the petite. I guess back then only manly men were expected to drive. I feel like I should have wooden blocks tied to my feet like Short Round from _Temple of Doom_. I'm not afraid, though, since I've driven this car this route every week, every Monday, ever since I moved to Seattle. It's like my second skin, this vehicular exoskeleton. The wind is blowing so fiercely that I can actually feel it in the steering wheel as I drive over the bridge._

_It's drizzling a little, and the streets are wet. The brake lights of the other cars streak the pavement with long red brushstrokes. The wipers are on intermittent, in a slow tango rhythm. My heart is racing in contrast, and I am having trouble concentrating on the traffic. I have to grip the wheel to remind myself that I am awake, that I am driving, that I am real. I've got the windows open a crack even though it's January because I'm tempted to lean my head against the car window, close my eyes, and think of him. _

_Even now, just saying "him" in my mind, my right hand leaves the wheel. I rub my thumb against my lips, remembering._

***

It was the weekend, so the Space Needle was crowded with tourists still in town for the holidays. I could see young couples with babies in Björns, families with older children, rosy-cheeked from running around in the winter air. Seeing complete young families always killed me inside a little, and I wondered if it ever bothered my mother when I was a child, when we'd be running errands, when she'd push me in a shopping cart at the grocery store, my chubby legs swinging, that it was just the two of us. Did she feel judged by the happy couples? Or did she just feel invisible? Did she feel my father's absence every day, see the space his body should have occupied?

When I'd woken up that morning, my phone was still under my ear. I wondered how long Jasper had waited before hanging up. Even though I'd fallen asleep, I knew that he'd sung all of "Blackbird"—he'd promised, and in adorable Horton fashion. I hoped I didn't snore. I couldn't remember my dreams, just the feeling as I drifted off of being blanketed in his voice. Instead of freaking out today, I'd just had to focus on remembering the voice, the song he'd sung just for me, and I'd feel centered. Granted, I was still jittery as hell, but it was an ecstatic kind of nerves.

Since I found usually found museums uncomfortably warm, I had put on a scoop-necked shirt—black, of course—and some dark jeans. On my dresser I found the choker my mom had made me in high school as a good luck charm for me to wear for auditions and exam days. I wore the necklace all the time, the one vestige of the Other Girl that I could bear to keep. I must have removed it during my New Year's Eve panic attack when I'd seen my reflection in the Rapunzel wig. It must have been too much, too familiar, to see that necklace against my pale throat against the curtain of long blonde hair. And yesterday I'd been too frantic and anxious about meeting up with Jasper to notice I didn't have it on. I fastened it quickly around my neck.

My mom could do just about anything with her hands: jewelry-making, knitting, sewing. She was an excellent cook, although her creativity sometimes led to kitchen disasters. I liked fusion as much as the next person—my mom and I liked to explore restaurants together, and she wanted to make sure I knew a little bit about every cuisine, making frequent road trips to Seattle to escape Olympia's limited ethnic food scene—but some of her combinations were less fusion and more fission, comma, nuclear.

What frustrated me at the time was that she was perfectly capable of following a recipe and making an exquisite dish, but she chose instead to improvise halfway through, follow random whims, and end up with something inedible. The dishes would always _look_ impressive, as she was often led by color or texture over flavor, inspired by artists: a Mondrian pasta salad with vegetable strips and black licorice laid in right angles on top, a Rothko creamy chicken casserole stained and bleeding through the layers with beets.

She'd surprised me with the choker as she dropped me off in front of my high school in her boxy, old-school Volvo station wagon. It was the day of tryouts for _Our Town_, the first play of my freshman year. I knew because of seniority rules, I'd probably have to be a chorus/Girl #7 drone for a few years before they'd even consider me for leads. But still, I was nervous. She'd said, "Close your eyes, Mary Alice; I have a surprise for you." Once I'd complied, she reached for my hand and placed the necklace in my palm. It was three interlocking brass rings ("To remind you always to reach for your dream") at the center of a braided black leather cord, and tiny brass comedy/tragedy mask charms dangled from the middle ring. The mask charms, antiques she'd found at an estate sale, were small enough not to broadcast my theater geekdom too loudly.

"Oh, Mom," I'd breathed, "it's simply perfect." I leaned over the gear shift to peck her on the cheek and lifted my long blonde hair up so she could fasten the clasp around my neck. The necklace seemed to hum with her energy. I felt as if I could accomplish anything.

At my audition, my mind was clear, and my voice did not falter. I recited Emily's sad farewell to Grover's Corners without even looking, my voice catching at the right times: _But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy_.[2] There was a hush in the auditorium after I'd said the last line of the excerpt, "I'm ready to go back." After a long pause, Mr. Crandall cleared his throat, thanked me, and asked me to send in the next person.

A week later, I could tell from the mob huddled in front of the drama room that the cast list had been posted. I was at the back of the crowd, and I was too short even to attempt to read the list from the back. I'd had to push my way to the front to read it, slipping under arms and walking sideways between the larger bodies. I thought I heard my name murmured as I wove my way through the crowd, but there were so many people pressed up against me that I was probably imagining it.

When I finally got to the list, I scanned the bottom of the page for my name, idly hoping to be "Dead Woman," "Woman in Auditorium," or maybe "Another Woman in Auditorium." My cheeks burned when I couldn't find my name at all, not even under the group of "townspeople" listed at the very bottom—_not even good enough to be human scenery_, I'd thought—but then I saw it. At the very top of the page. I'd been cast as Emily.

***

_I'm driving through the tunnel on Mercer Island. I like tunnels. The long, horizontal florescent lights fill the tunnel and Mrs. Fitzsimmons' car with ghostly white and artificial orange light. I can almost taste orange Tic-Tacs or Bayer Children's Aspirin or Tang on my tongue when I see that shade of orange. The lights whish by me as the car moves through the tunnel. I flick off the wipers for a moment, no longer hearing their tango rhythm, but the tunnel lights create a rhythm of their own, almost audible, as I rush past. It's more like a heartbeat than like music as the white and orange lights alternate. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. The heartbeat and the isolation of the tunnel make me feel like I'm in a big concrete womb—gestating. But into what? Will I be transfigured when I emerge out of the other side?_

***

Jasper beat me to our meeting place again. I could spot him from quite a far distance away now that I knew to look for the brown corduroy jacket and the mop of dirty blond waves. He had his hands in his jeans pockets. He smiled while I sidled up to him shyly, my hands shoved deep in my jacket. "Shall we?" he said, offering me his arm.

We walked the short distance to the Frank Gehry building, a pleasingly bizarre metallic structure made of hammered metal plates, twisted and strange like one of the statues that comes alive in _Beetlejuice_. Once inside, Jasper again insisted on paying my admission fee. Though I didn't need it, he helped me out of my jacket at the coat check. As he pocketed the plastic claim tag, I saw him glance at my neck. I thought he was doing the typical guy thing of checking out the goods (and, boy, would he be in for a disappointment), but he said, "Your necklace … may I see?"

"Yeah, of course," I said, tilting my head back so he could view it more clearly. He slowly brought his hand up, grazing my neck as he scooped up the charms in his fingers for a closer look. I immediately had goosebumps up and down my arms. I was thankful for my long sleeves.

Rubbing the masks between his thumb and forefinger, he asked, "Are you an actress?"

_If only he knew the half of it_. "Used to be, back in high school, I guess."

His brow was furrowed. "I've … this is an unusual necklace." He studied it closely, his face so close to mine that I was afraid to move. After an eternity, he let the necklace drop and cupped my face with his hand. "It's beautiful," he said, looking into my eyes.

I tried to mask my Jasper-induced shivering with a shrug. "My mom made it for me a long time ago." _Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, where there lived a princess and her beautiful mother, the Queen_, I thought to myself wistfully.

Jasper was silent for a while, brow still creased, studying my face. What was going on behind those eyes? Maybe he had been jilted by some bitchy thespian. I was worried the necklace or I had somehow offended him, but suddenly he shook his head and was all smiles again. He kissed the top of my head and cheerfully said, "Let's pay a call on Dr. Zaius!"

I laughed at his enthusiasm, and we grabbed hands and ran up the stairs like rambunctious children at recess.

***

_I'm in Bellevue, a third of the way there now. I'm driving past the Mercer Slough Nature Park. The park is beautiful, but from the highway, you can't really tell, especially not in the dark. Even in the summer months when it's still light out when I make this drive, it doesn't look like much, patches of trees and shrubs and desolation, any beauty overshadowed by the concrete from the highway. You'd never guess there was such lushness hidden inside._

_I think of him again and wonder if it's too late for me. I wonder if there is still lushness inside my heart, or if the only thing beyond my desolate shell is more desolation._

***

Jasper was the perfect museum companion—genuinely interested in the exhibits, reading all the placards, but not above making fun of the displays or, say, singing excerpts from the _Simpsons_' musical version of _Planet of the Apes_ loudly enough to get shushed by a guard. "I love you, Dr. Zaius!" he declared in his best Troy McClure voice in response, right in the shushing guard's face. I hit him repeatedly in the arm because I was worried he'd get in trouble, but I was also laughing so hard that I almost peed myself.

When we'd gotten far enough away from the irate guard, Jasper looked at me with a big grin on his face. "There's nothing that makes me happier than hearing you laugh like that."

I punched him in the arm again. "I'm glad one of us is happy, because my stomach hurts now, you jerk!" But I was still laughing when I said it, and I knew he knew I wasn't being serious.

It amazed me how easy I felt around him, how I could _almost_ be myself. I wasn't flinching every second, waiting for him to say something hurtful. When I was in his presence, the recipient of that _smile_, all the other voices in me were silenced, and all that remained was me, just me. I was surprised how quiet it could be in my head.

***

We're not, you know_, I hear a voice say, as the highway skirts Lake Sammamish. _

Not what?_ I ask, a little afraid to know._

Not gone. Not completely. Not ever_, it says. _

_I don't know what to say in response to that, so I just keep driving, my eyes focused on the road._

We're always going to be here_, the voice says. _We'll never leave you.

_I think the voice is trying to be comforting, but I am the opposite of comforted. I drive faster, in hopes that I can leave all the voices behind._

***

Jasper went with me from the museum to the Unicorn for my shift. He'd asked permission, of course, and said to be sure to tell him if he crossed the line to creepy. He said once classes started again the next week, he wouldn't have as much free time. I was happy to have the company, and he spent the evening at the bar, huddled over some reading when I was busy with customers. Rosalie stalked over at one point and said, "No freebies," but she needn't have worried, since Jasper always insisted on paying. I _did_ feel rather awkward accepting his tips, because it suddenly made me feel like a stripper or something.

"You have to quit that," I hissed after he tried to give me a ten for a Guinness.

"Quit what?" he asked, looking puzzled.

"I just," I stammered, "I don't know, I just feel funny being, like, _paid_ by you, when you won't let me pay for anything, like, ever. It changes the parameters of our relationship." I nearly clapped my hands over my mouth when I realized I'd said the "R" word. I hoped he hadn't noticed.

No such luck. "Relationship, eh?" He cocked an eyebrow.

"Context, man. CONTEXT," I said in exasperation.

Thankfully, he let it drop. "Okay, I see your point," Jasper began, "but how can I thank you for your excellent service?"

I could think of _a lot_ of ways, but there was no way I was bringing them up. "You have Guinness mustache," I said Ralph Wiggumly, blushing and pretending my cuticles were suddenly fascinating.

"Yes, I do," he grinned. His eyes flashed, and he said, "Can I have a napkin?"

I reached under the bar and gave Jasper a cocktail napkin emblazoned with an embarrassingly girly unicorn. How straight guys could even bear to come into this pub was beyond me. I expected him to wipe the foam off his lip, but instead he grabbed a pen out of his messenger bag and began to draw lines on the napkin.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm making a tally. Here, I write down services rendered: _Excellent Guinness, perfect temperature, friendly demeanor_," he said, writing down the "services" as he spoke them aloud. He thought for a minute and added, "_Satisfactory personal hygiene_."

"Yeah, _thanks_, smartass," I said, flicking a ShamWOW at him. I grumbled under my breath, "Satisfactory, my ass, satisfactory."

"Oh yes, _satisfactory ass_," he added to the list. "Okay, and now in this column, I write down what I owe you in tips." He looked up in concentration. "Let's see, I need to apply the conversion rate from dollars to …" he trailed off.

I was dying. Dollars to _what_?

Jasper was still deep in thought. "Mmhmm, okay, with compound interest, now carry the one … If only I'd brought my abacus, and I think this one involves imaginary numbers …"

I tried to see what he was writing, but he turned his body away, shielding the napkin with his other hand. "Nope, no peeking until I'm done," he said.

I drummed my fingers impatiently on the bar top.

"Excuse me, but I'm having trouble concentrating with all this racket," he sniffed.

I threw up my hands and checked in on the other patrons, seeing if anyone needed a refill.

"Miss? Oh, miss?" Jasper waved to me as soon as I'd reached the far end of the bar. "I want to settle my tab now, please."

I was dying of curiosity, but I walked as slowly as I could back over to him. He handed me the napkin. In the first column were all the things I'd seen him write down moments ago: _Guinness, temperature, demeanor, hygiene, ass, _etc. In the second column, he'd simply written, "I.O.U. 1 kiss."

***

_I'm driving around the Tiger Mountain State Forest. Almost there now. The drizzle has never stopped this whole way, but it's stayed light enough for me to keep the wipers on their tango rhythm. It's nothing but trees all around me now, majestic, coniferous trees, feathery shadows looming in the darkness. Through the cracked windows of Mrs. Fitzsimmons' car, I can smell the pine resin. As I breathe in the scent deeply, I become aware of my beating heart. It beats a counterpoint to the tango rhythm, and the shadowy trees seem to want to join in the dance. I'm distracted for a moment with a montage of images: these shadowy, foreboding pine trees uprooting themselves and spinning feverishly to Saint-Saëns' _Danse macabre ("Oh! La belle nuit pour le pauvre monde!"[3])_, the Rosalie-like miserly trees from _The Wizard of Oz_ pelting Dorothy with apples, the newly-reawakened Dryads and Naiads dancing wildly around the Pevensies in _Prince Caspian_. Nature is alive and savage outside the car and in my head, and I am both excited and terrified._

***

The rest of the night dragged painfully on, the cocktail napkin with Jasper's I.O.U. burning a hole in my pocket. I was having trouble forming words, so for once I let the visions come, pouring drinks without even asking people what they wanted. _Let them stare_, I thought for the moment. Anything to make the shift's end come more quickly. And I didn't want to hear any other voice but his.

Jasper had become suddenly bashful after I'd read the napkin and shoved it into my jeans pocket. He pretended to read his book, but I could see him sneaking looks at me when he thought I wasn't looking. I liked it—for once it made me feel powerful to draw a man's gaze, not tiny and vulnerable. I wanted him to look.

At 2 AM, I did the bartender's standard attention-getting clap and announcement, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Rosalie made me shoo Jasper out as well, even though I gave her my saddest puppy eyes. I should have known better than to even attempt it; she was impervious to sad puppy eyes. I squeezed Jasper on the arm as I led him to the door and said, "Wait for me, okay?"

Buttoning up his jacket, he said, "You even need to ask?"

I cleaned up my station and helped reset for the next day, zooming around at high speed like people in an old silent newsreel. Finally Rosalie gave me a curt nod indicating that I could leave. I flew out the doors and saw Jasper leaning against the side of the building.

"Hi," I said, smiling.

"Hi."

We grinned at each other, bathed in the orange light from the streetlamp.

***

_I've exited I-90 and am heading north on 202. I can hear the Snoqualmie Falls thundering in the distance. Snoqualmie is so beautiful. It's a good place to be, all things considered. I see the sign for Meadowview, so I put on the blinker and turn right, and begin my ascent up the long, winding driveway. I'm careful to follow the 5mph posted speed limit. There's plenty of parking this time of day, since most of the employees go home right at five. I'm always able to find a spot close to the door. "Rock star parking," my mom used to say._

_I park the LeBaron and step outside. It's still drizzling, but I don't bother with an umbrella. I lean my head back and let the mist dampen my face. I take a deep breath and begin walking toward the double doors. _

***

Jasper looked at me expectantly, thinking, no doubt, about the napkin in my pocket. I didn't want anyone here to see us, so I said, "Walk me to the hotel so I can get a cab?" I didn't normally take cabs home, choosing most nights, perhaps foolishly, to walk the mile and a half back to my place after the buses stopped running. I didn't share this information with Jasper, not wanting him to worry about me retroactively.

Once we turned the corner and got to the hotel's red awning, I said, "Let's duck inside for a moment," leading him through the automatic doors and into the lobby. The night staff knew me pretty well by face, so they just nodded as we walked by. The lobby was a little secluded from the check-in area, and there was a warm, inviting fire roaring in the impressive fireplace. A real fire, with logs and hissing and sputtering, not one of those fake gas deals that merely looked pretty but provided no warmth.

It was pretty deserted that time of night, which I'd counted on. Now was the moment. _Just do it, already!_ With fear and excitement and anticipation, I extracted the napkin from my pocket. I swallowed, hoping my voice would be functional once I started to speak again.

"I, uh, I believe you owe me something," I said sheepishly, showing him the napkin. I hoped he thought my red face had something to do with our proximity to the fireplace, but I knew I was just fooling myself.

Jasper didn't say anything, which made me a little nervous until he took my hand holding the napkin and placed it on his hip. He leaned down to me, cupping my face the way he had at the museum, and I nearly forgot how to breathe. I knew it was polite to close my eyes, but there was no way I was going to miss a second of this. I noticed he didn't close his eyes either, staring into me with eyes glittering in the firelight.

His lips were as soft as I'd remembered them from New Year's, when he'd kissed my hand. But on my mouth, they were full and warm and perfect. First he just brushed my lips with his, testing the waters, gauging my reaction, and, when I sighed in response, he brought his arms around and clasped me around the waist, kissing me with more intensity. It never got rough or frantic; it was more like a slow burn consuming us both. He gently grazed my lower lip with his teeth, and my lips parted involuntarily. I stood on my tiptoes so I could be closer to him. My arms were around his neck now, my fingers tangled in his wavy hair. He was sucking on my lower lip a little, and his whole mouth was just so warm, melting something in me I didn't know was frozen.

I wasn't aware that I'd started to cry until Jasper pulled away and looked at me with concern.

"Baby, are you all right? Was that too much?"

I laughed, wiping away tears. "I … I'm fine, really, I have no idea why I'm … these aren't my tears," I explained stupidly.

His hands still cupping my face, he carefully brushed more tears away with his thumbs. He kissed me at the corner of my eye. I got on tiptoe again to meet his mouth and kissed him, tasting the salt of my own tears on his lips. My small hands were cupping his face now too, feeling the sandpaper of his cheeks, the angular set of his jaw. We melted into each other for a while until I broke away, grinning. We stood for a long time, forehead to forehead, hands cupping faces. He was grinning too.

I couldn't bear to leave him, but I also didn't want to mess anything up, our perfect moment, so I said, "I should probably get to sleep," leading him by the hand back outside. As the doorman held a cab door open for me, I scrambled into the backseat. Jasper leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. "Call me when you get home," he said, giving me a twenty for the fare and shutting the door before I could protest.

I smiled all the way home, clutching the cocktail napkin in my hand.

***

_Everyone knows me here, and the night guard buzzes me in, not bothering to ask for ID as I sign myself in. I take the elevator to the third floor and ring the bell. One of the orderlies lets me in, and I wait in the vestibule while he locks the door behind me and unlocks the door in front. He knows where I'm going, so he starts walking down the long hallway, knowing I'll follow him. I stop by the nurses' station to drop off my bag—I know the drill. The head nurse looks tired, but she smiles at me as I walk past. It's a quiet night—must not be a full moon. I hear some murmuring behind the doors, but no shouting or screaming, which is a relief. The orderly stops in front of the room, unlocks the door. "I'll be right outside," he says with a nod._

_I steel myself and cross the threshold. I see her sitting on the side of the bed, her back to me, her long blonde hair halfway down her back. She's looking out the window, probably watching the moon. I want her to look at me. Lines from _Our Town_ float back into my head: _But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another![4]

_I clear my throat so I don't startle her. I walk to the other side of the bed and sit down beside her, resting my head on her shoulder._

"_Hi, Mom," I say, following her gaze to the gibbous moon outside._

* * *

[1] Tori Amos, "Upside Down," ("Winter" EP, 1992).

[2] Thornton Wilder, _Our Town _(1938), Act III.

[3] Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), under the pseudonym Jean Lahor, "Danse macabre." "Oh, what a beautiful night for the poor world!"

[4] Wilder, Ibid.

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**A/N: Um yes. So this may be the last quick update for a while, because I've been writing, writing, writing to get to that last scene. Please don't hate on me.**

**If you have given me a cocktail napkin says "I.O.U. 1 Review," well, make good on it, would ya?**


	7. Child of the Moon

**A/N: I've got to put my hair in hot rollers now, so this note will be brief. Love to the Rav UUs, Saturday night chat, and thanks to Becca Graymoor for pointing out my egregious _Temple of Doom_ error. And Grendelsmother has a new chapter up of Emmett's POV--check it out in my faves. **

**Stephenie Meyer owns everything, including that sandwich in your hand.**

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**Chapter 7: Child of the Moon**

_Dreaming as I watch it gleam, I am mining heavenly ore. Gold is the sun, but silver, silver lies hidden in the core of dreams._

_- John Latouche_[1]

My mother sat on the edge of the bed in her thin cotton nightgown and looked out at the moon. I took her cold hand in mine, the skin loose and translucent as birch bark from the years of her confinement with little sunlight or exercise. She hardly resembled the mother of my memory, all the weight she'd gained on the anti-psychotics, her face as round as the gibbous moon outside. Even so, she was still so beautiful to me, especially by moonlight, a bewitched fairy princess.

"Mom? Hey, I'm here." I gave her hand a squeeze. Nothing. I tried to get her attention, but she kept staring at the moon. Biting my lip, I let go of her hand.

"Not complete," she whispered, still looking at the moon. "Not whole." She pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock a little.

"Hush, hush," I soothed, trying to keep my voice from breaking. I ran around her bed to the nailed-down desk and got her cheap plastic hairbrush. I began brushing out her hair in long, even strokes. My mom's eyes fluttered closed, and she stopped rocking.

It wasn't so long ago that my mother would be the one to brush my hair at bedtime, our nighttime ritual. I'd sit on the floor, and she'd brush my hair while sitting on the bed. We'd talk about the day, about what had happened in school, how rehearsals were going. By the time I hit high school, I knew I was getting too old for it, but I didn't care. At the time I stubbornly thought, _Even if I'm fifty years old and a grandmother, I will still want my mom to brush my hair_.

My mother was calmer now, and she started to hum a familiar tune. It took me a few phrases to place the song: "By the Waters of Babylon." We used to sing this as a round on road trips to Seattle. She'd learned it in choir when she was a young girl. I remembered how patiently she'd sung the lines to me, waiting for me to echo them back, and how we practiced for miles before I could hold my own line independently. In her dim room, I sang very softly the second part of the round over my mother's humming, our voices intertwining against the hum of the florescent lights in the hallway outside. _We lay down and wept, and wept for thee, Zion. We remember, we remember, we remember thee, Zion_.[2]

My mother turned and smiled at me. "Are you in school with me? You look familiar," she said, her face twisted in confusion, "but I … I'm not sure."

"Yes," I lied. "I sit in the back of the choir room. You always sound so beautiful."

My mother smiled broadly and said, "I hope we can be friends!" I took her hand again, and this time she grasped it firmly.

"Yes, I know we will be," I said. She beamed.

I wanted to tell her about Jasper, the way we used to girl talk late at night, every night a slumber party. I wondered what my mom would have said about him back then. She would have sighed and giggled and squealed and insisted on having him over for dinner, maybe. Maybe she would have made Mexican food in his honor, Frida Kahlo chicken enchiladas, adding the finishing touch with a pastry bag filled with mole sauce, a carefully crafted Kahlo unibrow on top of each one. Maybe she'd tuck little plastic monkeys around the serving platter, the kind they hung on your glass if you ordered a fruity drink at TGI Fridays. Jasper would get it right away, I thought. I could just hear his laugh.

Or maybe he'd see through that, right into her brain at the disease inside. Would he judge her? Would he shy away from me, afraid that the crazy was contagious? Or would he begin to analyze us, see us as subjects for study? I wasn't sure which scenario would hurt me more. I decided then I'd never tell him about her, about this place, and I was surprised to find I'd even been thinking about telling him, imagining the possible scenarios.

My decision felt like betrayal, as if I were ashamed of my mother. But I wasn't. I wasn't ashamed. I loved her fiercely. I only wanted just as fiercely to protect her—me—us. Protect us. We were our own imperfect universe, a damaged duprass.[3] No one could hurt us anymore, not here. Still, I felt guilty.

We sat together holding hands, interrupted only by the checks from the orderly every fifteen minutes. At the 7:45PM check, the orderly quietly cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry, but visiting hours are almost over, Ms. Brandon."

_Ms. Brandon_. It took me a second to register that he was speaking to me. It was far less complicated to go by my phantom name here, be the girl I'd buried in Olympia before leaving home. It was too much to explain otherwise, and why bother hiding here? Meadowview Hospital already knew my darkest secret, cared for my precious secret twenty-four hours a day. When I walked these halls, I was a girl who didn't exist.

I gave my mother's hand a final squeeze before standing and putting the hairbrush away.

"I love you, Mom," I said, planting a kiss on the top of her head. "See you next week."

"You're leaving? But I thought we were friends. I thought we were going to be best friends." My mother began to get a little hysterical. The orderly stiffened, on alert to see if he'd need to restrain her or call for sedatives.

My heart breaking, I quickly said, "I'll be back, I promise. I'll be back before you know it." I thought about for a second and added, "I'll see you in choir tomorrow morning."

My mother's face was all smiles again as she waved to me cheerfully. "Bye, friend!" she called out as I started walking away. "I made a new friend!" I heard her tell the orderly as I walked out the door.

I stopped by the nurse's station to pick up my bag. I walked to the exit of the long-term care unit but had to wait a few minutes until there was another orderly available to let me out. I waited in the vestibule while he locked the unit door behind us and unlocked the door leading to the stairwell and elevator. I thanked him while impatiently tapping the elevator call button. He shut and locked the door behind me with a curt nod.

I waited until the elevator doors closed before letting out the sobs that had been building since I'd arrived. It never got easier. Some weeks she would know who I was. Maybe those weeks were the hardest, because she was so like my _mother_, the one I grew up with, the one who took care of me. Actually, I didn't know which was worse: the weeks she didn't know me, or the weeks when she was lucid and I could remember what it was like, could see a glimpse of the way things might have been.

I figured since it was a mental hospital, that there were all kinds of monitors in the elevators, but I didn't care. I slumped down into a corner and sobbed and banged my ineffectual fists on the metal walls of the elevator anyway. _Let them watch_, I thought. _It's nothing they haven't seen before_. When I got outside, it had stopped raining, but it didn't matter, because my face was still wet with tears.

Driving back to Seattle, I had a hard time remembering my elation from my kiss with Jasper. My mind was filled with my mother, her singing voice still like silver. No matter what happened, she'd always have that beautiful voice.

I stopped crying somewhere on I-90 West, which was a relief since it was hard to see the road through my tears. I was glad, at least, to be within the confines of Mrs. Fitzsimmons' car and cloaked in the darkness of the January evening. It wouldn't matter here if I had puffy eyes and splotchy cheeks. I was reminded why I craved solitude.

As if on cue, the Dandy Warhols started up again, and I reached over for my phone, flipping it open without checking caller ID.

"Hey, Alice? It's me."

I flushed as soon as I heard Jasper's voice and took a few deep breaths before answering, hoping he couldn't tell I'd been crying.

"Oh, hey." I meant to sound chipper, but my voice fell flat. Acting FAIL.

"Baby, are you all right? What's wrong?" Oh, crap.

"Just having one of those days, I guess," I tried to brush it off casually.

"Do you need me to beat someone up?" Jasper offered. "You know I would beat down anyone who gave you a hard time."

I thought for a second how long the list would be and laughed hollowly. "I don't think you'd ever finish your thesis if you made good on that offer. And besides, I might need those arms for later." My heart thudded as I added, "You know, for the holding."

"They _are_ pretty good at that," he admitted, still sounding worried, "but, hells, Alice, do you need me to meet you somewhere? I can leave right now—seminar just ended."

Jasper had mentioned over the weekend that he had very class-heavy Monday nights, which was rather convenient, since then I wouldn't have to lie to him about my weekly trips to Meadowview.

"Oh, that's sweet. I'm on the road now, just finishing up some errands," I said. "I won't be back in town for another half hour or so." I considered using my driving as an excuse to get off the phone, but I found I couldn't bear to break the connection. I didn't want to lose the relief I'd felt as soon as I'd heard his voice again. "Can you just stay on the phone with me until I get home? I'm feeling a little lonely."

"Of course, anything you want." _Anything_, he'd said.

I drove on in silence for a while, feeling better that he was on the other end of the line, alive, breathing, warm. On a whim, I asked, "Do you know 'By the Waters of Babylon'?"

"Can I find it on Google Earth?" Jasper asked. I was pretty sure he was joking.

"It's an old round, really pretty." I couldn't believe what I was about to do. I took a breath, less nervous than I thought I would be about singing, _really_ singing, in front of anyone other than my mother for the first time since … since _it_ happened senior year. I'd vowed then I'd never do it again, the memories too vivid and painful. But Jasper made me strangely unafraid. And I found that I really wanted to share this part of me. I imagined myself at a smoky cabaret, sitting on a stool, a man's bowler on my head, a spotlight focused on my face. I was slowly lifting my head, reaching for the mic, and leaning in, singing to him, my one audience member.

I took another deep breath and began to sing. I sang all three phrases of the round through for him. It was all for him, only for him.

There was silence on the other line that made me exceptionally nervous. "Sweet _damn_, girl, your voice is gorgeous," Jasper breathed.

I blushed but didn't allow myself to enjoy his compliment further. "I … I was wondering if you could sing it back to me."

"Really? Huh, okay, can you sing it again? I didn't realize this was going to be on the exam."

"Silly, don't you know by now that _everything_ is _always _going to be on the exam?" I laughed lightly. I sang the first phrase, "'_By the waters, the waters of Babylon_.' Now you."

Jasper started out a little shakily, but got the line out. He had a good ear. I made him repeat it a few times to make sure he really had it.

"Okay, and the second phrase goes, '_We lay down and wept, and wept for thee, Zion_.'" He obediently repeated the phrase. I could listen to him sing forever.

"And the last phrase is, '_We remember, we remember, we remember thee, Zion_.'" He was a much faster study than I was when my mother was trying to teach me all those years ago, needing only one or two repeats before sounding really solid.

"Did I pass?" he asked.

"Flying colors," I replied, "but that was just part one of the exam. Now we have the practical application portion. Do you think you can hold your own part if I sing the second voice?"

"I'll give it the old college try," Jasper said, making me smile with his use of one of my favorite turns of phrase.

"Let's sing the whole thing together, and then you can start the repeat before I come in," I suggested.

We sang together in unison, our voices octaves apart in register but feeling like one. The sound of our voices together, the feeling of exposing our voices like this to one another, nothing before had ever felt so intimate to me. I was getting a little warm. I put the phone on speaker and dropped it into my lap so I could concentrate on driving with both hands.

When we started the round, Jasper's voice rang out true, even through the tinny speaker on my phone. When I started my part, he stayed steady all the way through, even though he'd learned the round not ten minutes prior. Like I said, good ear.

We sang through the round a few times, our voices weaving in and out, sometimes my voice on top, sometimes his. It all just felt so right.

I was distracted by catcalls on the other line. I stopped singing. "Um, Jasper? Where are you right now?"

"I'm on campus, standing outside the library."

"Oh god, why didn't you tell me? I'm sorry, I should have checked first." I couldn't believe I'd made him make an ass of himself in public like that.

"Eh, it's no big. I wouldn't have sung if I didn't want to," he said.

I was entering the city limits. I suddenly felt the need to see him right away. "Hey, do you need a ride somewhere? Can I drop you off at your place?"

"Sure! If it's no trouble," he added hastily. Such a gentleman, always.

Jasper gave me directions to the library, and in a few minutes I was pulling up beside him. I stopped the car in the shuttle stop, put the hazards on, and ran out of the car, not even bothering to shut the door. He was still talking to me on the phone, but I'd abandoned my phone on the driver's seat. I took his phone out of his hands and shoved it in his jacket pocket. I hugged him tightly, my face buried in his chest. He brought his hands up and squeezed me back.

"Thank you," I mumbled into his chest. "Thank you for singing. Thank you for talking. Thank you for being right here."

"I, uh, okay," he laughed, and planted a kiss on the top of my head. I still wasn't sure how we were supposed to do this, but remembering the heat of our voices working together, our souls completely naked in that moment, I just threw my arms around his neck and kissed him hard. He returned the kiss with intensity, if a little surprise. I could still hear the LeBaron's hazards clicking on and off and its old engine idling impatiently, and then it all disappeared as I got lost in Jasper's kiss, soft and warm all around me, hearing his voice in my ears, feeling his tongue in my mouth, his hands on my back. My neck started to ache from having to stretch so high to meet his mouth, but fuck if I cared.

I came back to earth as I heard someone shout out, "Get a room!" I surprised myself by continuing to kiss Jasper with abandon, slowly stretching out my hand, and flipping the bird in the general direction of Mr. Completely Original, Honestly I've Never Heard Such Biting Wit Before, Comment. Jasper stopped kissing me long enough to whisper with pride, "Atta girl."

Eventually we pulled apart, my lips swollen, my face flushed. Jasper looked really happy. And it was because of me. I had made him feel that way. I glowed.

"Let me take you home," I said, opening the door for Jasper.

I drove with one hand, leaving the other free to hold Jasper's hand. He brought my hand up to his mouth, murmuring directions while planting little kisses on the back of my hand, my fingertips, my knuckles, my palm, the inside of my wrist. Never before had "Bear right at the fork" been so sexy.

We were stopped outside the house that he said he shared with the Hot DJ and Damn Dirty Ape Emmett. "Do you want to come inside?" he asked hopefully.

"Um. I think maybe I'm not ready to meet your friends just yet," I said, looking at my lap.

"That's okay, whenever you're ready," he said, giving my hand another squeeze. And another little kiss on the wrist for good measure.

He leaned over, and we kissed some more in the car, in the dark, in the stale cigarette air. I would have stayed there for hours, but I wondered if anyone was watching us from those lit windows. "I'd better go," I said reluctantly.

"Call you later," he said, giving me one more soft kiss.

Back at home, I kicked off my shoes and got into my pajamas. I padded in my socked feet out onto my small balcony, where I could see the moon, almost full. I thought of my mother looking out at the same moon from her window at Meadowview. I felt like an asshole, like fucking Fievel, but I started speaking quietly anyway.

"Hi, Mom. I know you can't hear me, but I met a boy, and he's wonderful, and you would love him, Mom, I know you would. And I wish you could meet him and hear him sing and give him a hard time and make him inedible dinners. And I miss you, Mom, I miss you." I hugged myself to keep warm, and watched my breath curl around the moon.

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[1] John Latouche, "Silver Aria," _The Ballad of Baby Doe_ (Douglas Moore, 1956).

[2] "By the Waters of Babylon," traditional. Random person singing it on YouTube: www. youtube. com/watch?v=EBy3sdubbmQ

[3] "Duprass," a karass made of two people. A concept seen in Kurt Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_ (New York: Delacorte Press, 1963), in his invented religion of Bokononism. See: en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Duprass

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**A/N: And now, to the hot rollers. Reviews are delicious, like bacon.**


	8. Third Person

**A/N: This one's short but pivotal. La la la. Love to my usual peeps: Rav UUs, Saturday night chat. Jayne Rulis has a new chapter up of Edward's POV: Bold as Love. Check it out in my faves. Shoutout to my friend Bathmat Ferries (anagram of his name) for helping me out when I couldn't remember "lenticular."**

**Disclaimer: Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Stephenie Meyer owns the universe.**

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**Chapter 8: Third Person**

_She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering._

_- William Goldman_

She sits quietly, smiling to herself. She has a skein of yarn by her bare feet, a strand from the center of the skein snaking up and wound twice around the pinky of her right hand. Her wooden needles clack against each other in a rhythm as steady as the rain splashing on her windowpanes. In her mind she repeats the rhyme her mother taught her when she was small: _In through the front door, once around the back, peek through the window, and off jumps Jack!_

It had been raining then, too, a Saturday, and she'd pouted at not being able to play outside. Her mother was knitting, as always. She was always making something with her hands, always creating beauty out of nothing.

"It's fine for _you_," her five-year-old self had said huffily, "to stay inside all day, because you've got your stupid yarn and sticks to play with."

"Well, Miss Mary Quite Contrary," her mother had answered, "it's high time you learned." And she'd shuffled into the pantry in her slippers and emerged a few moments later with a pair of wooden #8 needles and a bit of candy-apple red wool, worsted weight. She cast on a few stitches. "You can make a teddy bear scarf," she'd stated, pulling out a kitchen chair and patting it for her to sit on.

Her mother had guided her hands patiently, repeating the little nursery rhyme until she could do it on her own. They'd knit together while the rain poured down. There had been cocoa for her, tea for her mother, and homemade gingersnaps for them both. There had been dropped stitches, extra stitches, and split yarn for her, and even, perfect stitches for her mother, who didn't even look at her hands.

She knits like her mother now, not looking at her hands, an old pro. She gazes out the window at the rain streaking down the window in rivulets. She murmurs, _In through the front door, once around the back, peek through the window, and out jumps Jack_. Again and again and again. She doesn't need the rhyme anymore, hasn't needed it since she was five, but lately she likes saying it to herself, even if she's purling or making a yarnover or passing a slipped stitch over.

There's something comforting about the repetition, almost like a meditation. A meditation, maybe, or a prayer. The feel of the wooden needles in her hands makes her think of the wooden rosary beads her grandmother gave her on her first communion. She'd thought they were so beautiful, and the rosary, though new, smelled of the dark and of secrets. Of knowing. _Maybe carved from the Tree of Knowledge_, she considers absentmindedly.

The monotony of the motions of knitting, purling, knitting, purling, stills her mind and gives her an overwhelming feeling of peace, something she never felt when she held the rosary beads, now long discarded. Every Sunday, her grandmother would make the three of them, the three generations of her broken little family, recite the rosary together, as a condition for living in her home. As a child she said the words without meaning, without understanding, just a strange game the adults played, her grandmother looking on, nodding primly. Her mother—she realizes now—resented it, shoulders slumped, droning the words anemically. Funny how a memory changes when you look back as an adult, a secret image emerging like a stereogram. How her mother must have wanted to leave.

Her mother did leave, once, long ago, in anger and defiance. Triumphant, and it should have been for forever.

It _would_ have been for forever had her mother had chosen her man more wisely, she thinks sadly. She immediately corrects herself: It would have been forever _had she never existed_. If not for her, her mother might have made it alone, man or no man. If not for her, her man may not have left in the first place. But finding herself abandoned, belly swollen with new life—swollen with _her_—her mother didn't have the strength, not for two. She could have been brave enough just for herself, maybe.

It was all her fault, then. Everything: her father's urge to flee, her mother's forced, humiliating return to the house she'd sworn never to set foot in again, her mother's final, disastrous breakdown. It seems she is forever the catalyst to her mother's misery. Her knitting rhythm is thrown off, and she blinks back tears, thinking of the suffering she has caused her mother. She should never have been born.

She considers, for a moment, if she'd give up her life so her mother could have escaped. On the one hand, she'd gladly do anything to see her mother happy. But on the other, she is terrified of not existing, terrified of the dark and nothingness. She thinks that if she didn't exist, that she'd somehow still be aware of her nonexistence, be trapped in an endless loop of guilt and anxiety and fear. When she thinks of nonexistence, she unexpectedly thinks of the mirror prison in _Superman II_. She can see her image trapped in that mirror inexplicably floating in space, with that strange sort of … hoop _thing_ keeping her there. The image would make her laugh if it weren't so frightening and real, even in its absurdity.

If she's being honest with herself, she knows she, like Emily Webb, would miss "clocks ticking … food and coffee—and new-ironed dresses and hot baths—and sleeping and waking up!"[2] Although everything about living in this world scares her, she clings to her life stubbornly, selfishly. Even if it would save her mother, she wouldn't be able to do it. She knows it's a moot point: she could never make an even exchange with the universe, her life for her mother's. Even so, she feels like a failure, a traitor. If she were a good daughter, she'd say in a heartbeat, _Take me instead._ Familiar guilt eats away at her.

She curses under her breath, realizing she's dropped a stitch. She knows she could fix it easily with a crochet hook, but at the moment she feels she is not worthy of the quick, neat fix. Neat fixes are for people who don't ruin lives. She frogs the scarf down past the dropped stitch, the pulled-out yarn kinked like ramen noodles. She begins the arduous process of putting the live stitches back onto her needles. For a moment she imagines herself as Penelope, undoing her tapestry every evening to hold off her would-be suitors, patiently awaiting Odysseus's return.

Odysseus leads her thoughts now to her father, a presence she knows only as absence, a negative space. She doesn't know what parts of her belong to her father, what strands of his genetic code were knit into her. She thinks she knows what parts of her belong to her mother: her eyes, her hair, her premonitions. She dares not put into words what else she fears she may have inherited of her mother's, worrying that even forming the words will somehow encourage It to happen.

Does everything else in her belong to her father? If he's a part of her, does that mean she, too, is capable of running away and abandoning people when they need her the most?

She almost doesn't need to finish her question before she has her answer. Of course there is. After all, hasn't she already abandoned the person who needed her the most?

As this realization settles in, she lets herself cry for a while, until her knitting is all wet. The feeling of wet wool in her hands jolts her out of her indulgent crying. She shakes her head and resolutely begins her mantra again, _In through the front door, once around the back, peek through the window, and off jumps Jack_. Her hands begin to work mechanically again, and the repetition calms her thoughts. Knit, purl, knit, purl. She sighs heavily as she feels the quiet settle back in, determined to focus only on the sound of the rain splattering on the windowpanes and feel of wet wool sliding on wooden needles.

***

In a house on the other side of town, he sits stretched out on his bed and idly strums a guitar, thinking of her. He wishes he were holding her now, would gladly never touch a guitar again if it meant he could have her in his arms at this very moment, if she would be his forever. _Forever_, he thinks, a concept that used to scare him, but seems wonderful now, a world of possibilities, forever not even enough days to spend with this beautiful girl.

He strums the opening chords of "Blackbird" again, smiling because it makes him think of her. He hadn't consciously chosen to sing this song to her the other night; his fingers had just started forming the chords. Later that night, after he'd listened to her fall asleep on the phone (how he wishes he could have been there to see her eyelids droop, her body relax, the trouble leave her delicate face!) he thought that if he could pick a song for her, that it would have been "Blackbird" anyway. She seemed like such a frightened little bird, trembling, afraid of being hurt again. He could tell she'd been hurt, and badly, and often. And she was so brave, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, putting out this smartass, brassy image, a don't-fuck-with-me vibe, but anyone who'd bothered to look, _really_ look, into her eyes could see how deep the pain was. There was no doubt that she was an excellent actress, but her eyes couldn't lie. She had the eyes of an old woman who'd lived through war.

_Excellent actress_, he thinks again, and something tugs at his memory. The necklace with the little drama masks. He knows he's seen it before. He can see it in an old, faded photograph, but _where_? Was it a yearbook? He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to recreate the photograph in his head. He can see it so clearly in his mind, but he can't see if he saw it online, in a book, in a frame. He can't even see if it's in color or black and white. Maybe he dreamed it, he thinks, beginning to strum again. _Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box_,[3] he sings quietly, thinking, as he often does, in Beatles lyrics. As he gets to the refrain, he thinks that its lyrics are not quite right. He muses, _**She's**__ going to change my world. She already has_.

He checks the clock, wanting to call her, wanting to hear the musical lilt of her voice. It's after three. She's probably gotten home from the bar, maybe is sitting in her pajamas. She's told him that she goes to sleep late, but he thinks it would be awfully rude to call her this time of night. He stares at his phone and has a tug-of-war with his conscience about disturbing her. Chivalry wins out in the end, and he decides to head down to the kitchen for a glass of milk to prevent his fingers from overriding the executive order from his conscience and calling her up anyway. _Let the poor girl have a moment to herself_, he thinks, slipping into the darkness outside his bedroom.

***

She is beginning to nod off, lulled by the gentle pattering of the rain outside. She's fallen asleep knitting before, dreaming of hands sticky with cotton candy and finding her knitting in tangles upon awakening. She doesn't want to have to frog again, so she puts her knitting away. _That's enough for one night_, she decides. She stretches tall, as tall as her petite form will allow, yawning silently. She pulls back the covers on her narrow bed and flips off the light. She knows she'll be asleep in moments, and she whispers goodnight to _him_ as she crawls under the covers, tucking her hand under her pillow and wishing she had her fingers twined in his hair, a lock perhaps wound twice around her pinky. As she drifts off, she wonders what it would be like to fall asleep in his arms, his lips brushing against her forehead, his hands drawing lazy circles on her back. _Pretty wonderful_, she concludes as her consciousness slowly slips away.

***

He pours himself a tall glass of milk by the light of the open refrigerator and downs it in large, languid gulps. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and leaves the empty glass in the sink. He creeps back up to his room, squinting a bit as he walks into its brightness. It takes his eyes a few moments to readjust, and he resumes his position on the bed, strumming his guitar. He should be finishing his reading assignment, but he's distracted, still wishing he could phone her. He recalls her unbridled laughter in the museum, like tinkling bells, all the more precious because there were no masks. She was completely herself, yet still completely happy. _Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my open ears, exciting and inviting me_.[4] He hopes he can be the man who makes her that way all the time. He vows to try every waking moment to be that man.

The rain has stopped, and the moon shines brightly through his window. Since he met her, he sees her face everywhere: anywhere there is beauty, she is there. The moon reminds him of her shining eyes after the surprisingly intense kiss outside the library. He hadn't wanted to push her, and he really was fine with taking things slowly, feeling whole just knowing that she existed, lucky that out of all the people on this earth, this vulnerable and glorious creature had been the one tending bar on New Year's Eve.

So he hadn't expected anything when she came to fetch him after classes, hoping just for some quiet time with her, maybe hearing that melodious laugh again. But she'd flown out of that awesome boat of a car and leapt into his arms, and he felt as though he had been made to embrace her tightly, kiss those soft, Carmexed lips, bury his nose in her hair. Billions of years of evolutionary progress from single-celled organisms to multi-celled to vertebrates and primates and walking upright: all of it had culminated in this moment, to be able to hold her close to him in that damp, moonlit night.

The moon, the nearly full moon. As he looks out at the moon, he remembers that he dreads the full moon a little, knowing that work will be all the more taxing with the patients agitated. The staff is always on edge, anticipating episodes from the more violent ones. He's often come home with bruises from having to restrain a patient needing sedation. It's rough work being an orderly, but he needs the money for tuition and the experience to beef up his med school application.

And just like that, he knows where he's seen the little necklace before: in a faded photograph of a woman and her teenaged child, both with flowing blonde hair, in a cheap, shatterproof plastic frame. Shatterproof, because no sharps are allowed in the long-term care ward at the hospital.

And it all makes sense to him now, why his beloved's face often seems like a lenticular image: a forced, cheerful face, and then, tilted just _so_, the same visage streaked with anguish and suffering and intense loneliness. His heart breaks, imagining how much she must have suffered already in her short life. _I'll never add to her pain_, he vows, and he decides then and there never to mention it, never to tell her what he knows. She can tell him when she's ready. And if she's never ready, that's all right too.

_We have forever_, he thinks, settling back in to pluck chords into the night, imagining that he is playing her to sleep. _Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind, possessing and caressing me_,[5] he can hear her singing in that voice, clear and fragile as the moonlight filtering through the window.

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[1] William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_ (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), 56.

[2] Thornton Wilder, _Our Town _(1938), Act III.

[3] The Beatles, "Across the Universe," _Let It Be_, 1970.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading. Ceci n'est pas une totally blatant request for reviews.**


	9. Not in Kansas

**A/N: Thanks to the usual peeps, the proud citizens of Rav Unicornia (tm Amander), Saturday night chat, and extra thanks to Becca Graymoor for an awesome story banner (viewable on Twilighted) and for being Continuity Mistress. Be sure to check out Emmett (grendelsmother) and Edward (JayneRulis) POVs in the other In the Days of Auld Lang Syne stories, viewable in my favorites. **

**Disclaimer: Mr. T pities the fool who thinks these are my characters and not Stephenie Meyer's.**

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**Chapter 9: Not in Kansas**

_You will hear the shrillest highs and lowest lows _

_with the windows down when this is guiding you home_

_-The Postal Service_[1]

10 AM, and I was already up to my elbows in saltwater, the raw chicken bobbing like the body of Laura Palmer by the Packard Saw Mill. Glancing over at the open cookbook, I set the timer for an hour of brining. I still couldn't quite believe I was really going to let someone—someone from my outside life—come to my home.

Only my neighbors knew me here, and only vaguely, save for Mrs. Fitzsimmons, and she was a shut-in anyway. I didn't know any of the other tenants at Covent Garden Apartments by name, but I recognized faces enough to nod politely when I ran into anyone in the laundry room in the basement.

I knew Covent Garden was named for the London district, but every time I saw the faded lettering by the gloomy, clinical entrance, I mentally superimposed an N into the name. Convent Garden. Seemed fitting for the place I'd shut myself when I'd finished school: my voluntary isolation, my ascetic home.

The atmosphere, if you could call it that, at Co(n)vent Garden was an oddly comforting balance of recognition and anonymity, familiar enough not to feel completely sterile, but distant enough to feel unthreatening. Nobody pried here, or if folks wondered what my story was, they were too polite to come out and ask. _Home_.

There was a time I expected more from "home": warm arms holding me close, the smell of buttery treats baking, homework at the kitchen table among the clanging of pots and pans, the sweet humming of my mother. Good things. But that came at a price. I couldn't forget how my body would tense up when my grandmother and mother were having a silent battle of wills, or later when my mother started having her episodes. Nothing was ever spoken out loud, but I knew things weren't right. Even children can sense these things.

_Home_ now was not as bright, no dancing downstairs with my mother in our socks at midnight in front of the TV with a pint of ice cream, no sleeping with her vanilla perfume all around me. But _home_ was also less dark without the shame, the secrets, the lies. _Home_ now was the grayscale life seen through the colorblind eyes of a dog.

But now there was a spark of color. Him. As if I'd been swept up from my drab world in a tornado and found myself in Technicolor Oz. All because of … of a _boy_. I shook my head in embarrassment and wonder. How had he found me? Why had he chosen me? What could I have to offer anyone?

I'd hardly known Jasper long enough to have a pattern, a usual anything with him, but in the last few nights, he'd come by the Unicorn during my shift, poring over his schoolwork or correcting student assignments with a beer or two or an occasional mint julep. And I always knew what he wanted to drink, as sure as I'd know what I'd want if I were thirsty and standing in front of my own fridge. And, you know, I was sort of proud of it. A little bit proud that I could know what he wanted before he said it. Only I could do that for him, and it made me feel special, not cursed. That was a new feeling too, and one I hoped wouldn't bite me in the ass later.

And every time I mixed him a mint julep, he'd initially look misty eyed after his first sip but then slam his palm against the bar and exclaim, "God_damn_, woman!" in approval. I kind of lived for it. I'd taken to putting my hands on the bar in anticipation of his reaction, because I liked feeling the vibrations from the impact travel through the wood and up my arms, loved that his approval manifested as discernible energy that could travel physical distance and through solid mass. I was an antenna programmed to pick up Jasper frequency.

I no longer felt on display with him there while I worked. I just felt complete with him sitting there, grounded. Thankfully, he'd stopped trying to tip me and instead would slip me little cartoons he'd drawn on cocktail napkins. His whimsical doodles made me smile, mostly various animals outfitted with monocles and striped socks. He had a whole series of monkeys spelling out rude words with their tails. And occasionally he'd make more IOUs, which I gladly traded in at the end of the night.

As soon as I got home, I'd empty out my pockets and methodically put all the Jasper napkins into a shoebox under my bed. Sometimes I'd pick the box up and shake it. It was funny how something that made me flush so deeply and smile so broadly weighed next to nothing, a box of air and whispers and stolen kisses.

When things were slow, I'd sidle over, and we'd lace our fingers together as I'd lean over the bar on my elbows to be at eye level with him. Rosalie would stalk over at least once a night, and Jasper and I would intone "No freebies" in unison as Rosalie soon as opened her mouth to say the same. I actually was beginning to think she was doing it on purpose, a running gag, because I could see the corners of her mouth twitching a little as if she were suppressing a smile. I'd jokingly roll my eyes at her and smile while shaking my head. I could swear she returned the smile. Me, smiling at Rosalie when she was being a pain in the ass. And Rosalie, parodying herself for my—_our_—amusement. What was happening to us?

It happened on Wednesday night. Wednesday nights were slow, so I spent most of the evening by Jasper. He was kissing the inside of my wrist, which made it very hard to keep my eyes open. I _had_ to lean on my elbows, or else I'd trickle down the side of the bar and end up in a puddle on the floor. Okay, full disclosure: my eyes _may_ actually have closed, and my mind went curiously, refreshingly blank. I just started _talking_ without Sentry Alice keeping watch.

"You should come over," I murmured as he brushed his lips against my pale skin. _He should do __**what**__? _My brain snapped to attention.

Jasper spoke through his kissing, my wrist muffling his words. "Come over where?" More kissing. Imperative to stay perpendicular to ground. Mrrfle.

My mind went blank again, Sentry Alice abandoning her post to go out on an all-night bender. _Fuck all y'all_. "You know, whatsit, where I live and keep my shit." Gah, words, what were the words? "Home. Come to my home."

Jasper looked surprised for a moment before answering, "I'd love to, sweetheart." I could feel him smiling against my skin.

Oh no, did he think I meant after work? Like _right now_? Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I reluctantly pulled my arm away from Jasper's mouth so I could think straight. "Yeah, I thought you could maybe come over sometime. I could cook, maybe."

It was an idea I'd been kicking around for the last few days, especially since it was clear that Jasper wouldn't ever let me pay for anything. It wasn't that I was afraid that he'd think I'd _owe_ him something Old-School-Afterschool-Special style, but I did want to keep things somewhat even between us. And if I were being truly honest with myself, it wasn't just about keeping things even—I wanted to give something back to him for making my world explode with color.

I'd considered offering to come over to his place to make him dinner, but the thought of having to make small talk with his roommates filled me with panic and dread. Not yet. Not ready yet. I didn't want other people spoiling what we had.

So that left my place. Could I do it? Was I ready to let this life bleed into the edges of my safe, gray world?

It was terrifying, but for him I might be brave. When he nestled his face into my hair and held me tight, I almost believed I could do anything. My heart felt as big as a universe. But still, I hadn't expected to invite him over just yet. Yet here were my words, _out there_, and there Jasper was, looking at me inquisitively.

"Well, it just so happens that I like food," he said, smiling.

"Lunch?" I asked hopefully. I thought daylight might make the transition easier. Plus I was booked solid at the Unicorn in the evenings except for Mondays, and Mondays didn't work for either of us.

"How about Friday? I don't have any classes on Friday."

"Let's do it. Synchronize Swatches," I said, inwardly cringing as soon as the words left my mouth. Wow, that was dorky.

"Sweet fancy Moses, did you just quote _Parker Lewis Can't Lose_?" Jasper asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"Um, excuse _me_, but did _you_ just say, 'sweet fancy Moses'?" I said, putting my fists up and assuming my Tiniest Pugilist pose.

"Okay, okay, I know better than to engage with you in fisticuffs when I know for a fact that you could beat my ass," he laughed, holding his hands up in mock-surrender.

Placated, and before I could lose my nerve, I took a deep breath and painstakingly wrote my address on a cocktail napkin, tucking it into the shirt pocket of Jasper's vintage button-down when I was finished. I leaned over the bar and stage-whispered, "Memorize the address, and then destroy the evidence." I was only half-joking.

He looked at me for a moment with—pity? concern? puzzlement?—before patting his pocket and nodding solemnly.

He'd been looking at me sort of … differently for the last couple of days. I tried not to put too much stock into it, but it was so easy to worry over this unfamiliar expression. It wasn't all the time, and it was never for a long duration, but it still unnerved me whenever I saw him look at me that way.

What spooked me was that for those brief flashes, it was almost as if he could see right into my soul, all the secrets I'd locked deep within me. There was a part of me that craved the sympathy, the comfort he maybe wanted to provide, but another part wanted to pull my hair out and scream at him to just _stop_ it already, that I wasn't some kid with a boo-boo that could be fixed with a peck on the cheek and a lolly. And how dare he, how dare he look at me that way as if he knew anything about me?

And then I wasn't sure if I weren't just imagining all of it anyway.

Once the lunch plans were settled for Friday, I felt shy. It was also hard to squelch my overwhelming feeling of dread. I tried to calm myself. This was my choice—perhaps not the timing I'd planned, but still my idea. At the end of my shift, I declined, as I always did, Jasper's offer to walk me home, but hugged him tightly in the lamplight outside the bar. He'd recently taken to lifting me off my feet and squeezing me hard, hard enough to make my vertebrae pop. I was breathless from being squeezed like a bellows, from feeling his ribs against mine, from the odd intimacy of having my back cracked—something so hidden, so internal—by someone else.

I buried my face in his neck and breathed in his clean, soapy smell. There was no better smell in the world as far as I was concerned. Jasper lowered me gently back to the ground. I backed away from him a few steps before turning around and heading toward the Convent, my jeans pockets stuffed with napkins. "See ya," I softly called over my shoulder, knowing that he'd watch me shuffle down the darkened street until I disappeared.

After I'd gotten home and gone through the routine of emptying out my pockets into the shoebox, I called Jasper to let him know I was home safe. I didn't stay on the phone long, still feeling kind of shy and a bit panicked when I considered that he'd be at my apartment soon. My heart thudded against my chest, and my palms got rather unattractively clammy when I remembered that this was really happening, and soon.

"Play me a song?" I requested, hoping my voice wasn't shaking from nerves. I crawled under the blankets without bothering to get into my pajamas. I hadn't even bothered flipping on the light, knowing my sparsely-furnished apartment well enough to kick off my shoes and get to my bed without bumping into anything. I shivered in the dark.

Jasper noodled around on his guitar as he considered what to play, and eventually the aural scribbling began to shape into actual song. I loved being surprised by the songs he'd sing to me, never the same one twice, and always something that made me smile. He began picking out a tune I wasn't sure I recognized until he started singing its familiar refrain: "Always look on the bright side of life."[2] He whistled the little tag to the refrain. Only Jasper could make Monty Python sound like Iron and Wine, dusky and tranquil. Only he could make a line like "Life's a piece of shit when you look at it" into something approximating a lullaby. I whistled back to him over the phone and giggled at the absurdity, my nerves temporarily forgotten, as my eyelids grew heavy and I drifted to sleep.

***

Thursday slipped away from me even as I tried to dig in my heels and will time to stop. I needed more time to prepare myself for this next step. When I was still, I was filled with moments of such intense panic that I cleaned obsessively for most of the day. No, Jasper would not be taking a bath here, but what if he used the bathroom and checked if I had bathtub ring? What if he would be unable to look at me in the eye because of my nasty, bathtub-ring-having ways? Should my spices be organized according to flavor, by color, or alphabetically by common name? Or alphabetically by genus and species?

I pitied my downstairs neighbor for having to listen to me drag the vacuum over the floor. I'd start from the center of the floor and work in ever-expanding rectangles. Once I got to the edge of the room, I'd spiral back inward. Then I started getting creative, tracing words in cursive with the vacuum, first my name, then Jasper's, and, because it made me laugh, "cocksucker." It must have taken hours.

I also spent quite a long time plopped on the floor in the center of a fairy ring of open cookbooks, jotting notes down on a legal pad, trying to strategize main course, side dish, starch, dessert, and finalize a shopping list. Chicken seemed hard to ruin, and I went boring with baked potatoes and grilled asparagus, deciding to focus my culinary efforts on my mother's special carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, if I could remember the recipe.

The grocery trip was uneventful, and I was soon back at the Convent with my sacks of supplies. I had only a few hours before I was due back at work, so I preheated the oven and peeled carrots, grinding them in Mrs. Fitzsimmons' prehistoric food processor, which emitted a funny but not entirely unpleasant electrical smell when at full power, but had been grating and pulverizing and otherwise terrorizing produce probably since before I was born. When Mrs. Fitzsimmons gave me the old girl when I was helping her with spring cleaning one year, she said she'd named the processor "Nessie" because it—she—was such a formidable beast. I didn't use Nessie very often, but she held a proud place on my countertop. It was stupid, but it sort of made me feel safer to have her watching over my kitchen, because no one fucked with Nessie.

When I started measuring out the dry ingredients, I couldn't remember if the cake called for half a teaspoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of baking powder, or the other way around. I wished so hard that I could be like any other girl who could call her mom up to ask, hating that even the simple act of baking a cake could remind me of everything I'd lost, of how broken I was. I smacked my fist against my forehead repeatedly to try to dislodge the information from my brain but only ended up with a red forehead. I split the difference and did three-fourths a teaspoon of each.

The batter looked all right, and I poured it into my mom's dented cake pans. Just looking at the stained and bent metal rounds made me feel like a child again, and if I squinted and looked out of the corner of my eye, I could imagine that it was her hands putting the pans into the oven. She'd slide the pans onto the oven rack, face illuminated by the dim oven light, and I'd put in my own little cake into the EasyBake oven I'd dragged into the kitchen to be near her. Then we'd sit at the table and knit while we waited for our respective cakes to be done.

But today, only one set of hands, only one cake in one oven. But. But at least there would be two people eating the cake. That had to count for something.

I was worried going through our whole cake ritual, complete with the knitting, would just make me too sad, but I couldn't help myself. I pulled out the seed-stitch tea cozy I was making for Mrs. Fitzsimmons and sat at the small, unfinished pine table, knitting, purling, knitting, purling. At first I thought I'd be okay, since I was knitting more complicated things now than when I was a child.

I didn't even know how to purl until after my mother was hospitalized. I vowed to knit as much as I could because she couldn't. What a stupid fucking rule to include knitting needles under the "sharps" category. And to consider yarn too dangerous for patients to have unsupervised.

When I moved my mother to Meadowview from the awful institution outside Olympia after my grandmother died, I asked the nurses what their policy was about knitting. They gave me the standard bullshit about sharps and suicide risk. They said they'd allow supervised knitting, which gave me hope. The policy at Cedar Grove, the other institution, was no knitting at all. But I quickly learned that Meadowview, while a much more humane facility, was still grossly understaffed, and they simply couldn't spare a nurse or orderly to sit with my mother while she knit. So my mother's hands were still vacant, unoccupied, unrealized.

I promised myself then that I would knit for her. I mean, on one level I knew it would make little difference, that she'd have no idea someone was knitting on her behalf. But at the same time, at least someone was still creating; at least the hands she had made in her womb were echoing the motions her own hands ached to do. I would be her knitter by proxy. And maybe, maybe somehow it would mean something.

As I sat at my small kitchen table, the knitting was different enough from my childhood's garter stitch not to make me a complete emotional wreck—that is, until the smell of the carrot cake began filling the room. The cinnamon aroma plus the feel of yarn in my hands was too much memory at once, and I threw the knitting across the room as if it were made of viperous snakes. The knitting didn't go far, reeling out in a small parabolic arc from the skein to which it was attached, and I was vaguely aware of the sound of wooden needles clattering the floor as I laid my head on the table, my hands on my head.

I stayed as still as I could until the wave of sadness passed, waited, in fact, until the timer went off. Light was beginning to fade as I removed the pans from the oven and flipped the cakes out onto a rack to cool. I checked the oven clock—perfect timing, as I needed to head out the door for my shift at the pub.

Jasper didn't stop by until almost midnight—he had mentioned something vague about his work-study job. He seemed really beat when he approached the bar, and I had a Chimay poured and ready for him. He sank gratefully into the padded bar stool and took the glass from my hand.

"I don't know how you do it," he said, gently brushing my cheek with his other hand, "but thank you."

As I turned around, I smiled to myself and bobbed up and down on my feet a few times before heading to check in with patrons sitting at the other side of the bar.

***

Noon. T-minus 30 before Jasper's arrival. The chicken was in the oven along with potatoes wrapped in foil, the asparagus under the broiler. I didn't know if I could cook all three items at the same temperature, but I had only the one oven. I hoped that the oven dared not misbehave while Nessie watched its every move, probably just looking for an excuse to kick its ass.

I'd already frosted the cake while the chicken brined and roasted. I didn't have a cake spatula, so I'd had to spread the cream cheese frosting with a butter knife. It didn't look particularly tidy, but at least it smelled good.

Now that everything was pretty much ready, I changed into a vintage shirt-dress and waited. I drummed my fingers on the kitchen table and jiggled my foot and was basically a jittery mess. Had I made a terrible mistake in inviting Jasper here? There was no turning back now.

After checking on the asparagus, I started feeling sick, so I lay on the kitchen floor with my arms spread wide as if I were going to make a snow angel. I stared at the cracks on the ceiling while I tried to focus on my breathing. If Jasper walked in right now, he probably would think I was out of my mind. And right on cue, my door buzzer rang.

I jumped up a bit too quickly and had to hold onto a kitchen chair until the dizzy spell passed. I yelled, "Hello?" into the intercom and heard Jasper's voice crackle back through the tinny speaker. Rather than feel more panicked, I felt calmer, calm enough to buzz him in and brush off the back of my dress.

It seemed that there was a knock at the door almost immediately—I wondered if Jasper had sprinted up the stairs two at a time to my third floor apartment. My hand trembled on the deadbolt, and I had to take two or three good breaths before it was steady enough to unlock the door and swing it open.

It seriously fucked with my head to see Jasper standing there in my doorway, a bouquet of red and white striped tulips in his hand. It reminded me of when I would dream with my eyes open, and I'd see my nonsensical dream images superimposed over familiar objects in my bedroom. It was some impossible double-exposed image, except it was completely real. I would have stood and gaped for a while, but I didn't want to appear rude.

"Did you have trouble finding the place?" I asked, as I imagined most people to say when a person visited for the first time. I took the flowers from him with a smile and went to put them in water. I didn't have a vase, so I used an empty spaghetti sauce jar. Jasper followed me into the kitchen.

"It smells amazing in here!" he exclaimed, wide eyed as a little kid. He walked behind me and snaked his arms around my stomach, nuzzling the top of my head. It made me so happy, this little domestic scene, enveloped in Jasper in my kitchen. My kitchen would never be the same. It was as if he were painting large swaths of color everywhere he walked in my home. I suddenly wanted him to mark every room.

"Would you like the full tour?" I asked, turning around and wrapping my arms around his waist.

"Lead the way, little lady," he said, hugging me tightly back.

I took him through each room. The tour didn't take long at all, but I did hesitate a little before bringing him into my bedroom. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea, and I also had a brief, irrational fear that I'd left out a veritable carpet of feminine hygiene products. Shaking off these thoughts, I pushed open the door and led Jasper into my room. It was exceptionally tidy after my OCD cleaning spree the day before—no maxipad carpet, thank god. I rolled my eyes at myself, not least because I hadn't used pads in years.

My room was really quite plain: no framed photographs, no posters, no random cookie jar collection. The only personal, nonfunctional object in the room was Bear-Bear, and Jasper walked right over to him.

"Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing toward the bear. "Would you introduce us?"

"Uh, okay," I said, feeling foolish. I picked up the bear and held out a dingy paw. "This is Bear-Bear. He's been with me for quite some time."

Jasper shook the little bear arm. "Good to meet you, Mr. Bear-Bear." Looking from the bear to me, he asked, "Is this guy homemade?"

I pressed my lips tightly together before responding. "My, um, mother knit him for me when I was little. I used to have an allergy to synthetic fiber, so store-bought stuffed animals made me break out. My mom wanted me to have a teddy bear like all the other kids. Bear-Bear is all cashmere. Minus the stitching and the button eyes, of course."

Jasper took Bear-Bear from my arms almost reverently. He whistled low through his teeth. "Wow, your mother is really talented."

I was trying hard to keep a neutral face in reaction to his comment, but I could feel the tears welling up. Bear-Bear stared at me from Jasper's arms with his vacant button eyes. And then Jasper gave me that _look_ again, that same extra-concerned look. It was just too much.

"What?" I snapped. Jasper looked wounded. "Shit, I'm sorry," I said, sighing.

What portion of the truth could I tell? I thought things through and decided what parts to edit. "My mom used to knit all the time. She was amazing at it. She could make _anything_. And then she got really sick and couldn't, and she's … not with me anymore." There. That was the truth, mostly.

I tried not to feel too guilty about misleading Jasper into thinking my mom was dead.

Jasper was immediately there, wrapping me up in his arms, with Bear-Bear still clutched in his hands. "I'm so sorry, baby. You must miss her so much." His voice caught a little. God, he sounded like he actually got it, as if he could feel what I felt.

I buried my face in his chest and whispered, "All the time. I miss her every moment of every day." With as much dignity as I could muster, I added, "Could I have Bear-Bear now, please?"

Jasper handed me the bear, and I sat on the edge of the bed. I rested my chin on the top of Bear-Bear's head and smiled sadly. "I know it's silly to still have this bear around, but I can't get rid of him. He's … the only one who knew her like I did. And yesIknowhe'saninanimateobject." I ran my words together, embarrassed.

Jasper sat down next to me on the bed and hesitated for a minute before beginning to stroke my hair. I closed my eyes, rested my head against his shoulder, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Jasper was sitting next to my _on my fucking bed, no pun intended_. I just focused on his hand in my hair, his shoulder against my cheek.

Jasper spoke softly, "There's nothing silly about wanting to keep around a tangible signifier of your mom's love. And you and Bear-Bear have been through a lot and need each other." He took a moment to pat Bear-Bear on the head.

Speaking these feelings aloud were completely foreign and rather scary, but I was surprised at how much better I felt knowing that someone else knew, at least a little, about my mom and the hole in my heart. I was so grateful that Jasper hadn't laughed at me. He continued to stroke my hair, punctuating this soothing gesture with gentle kisses on my forehead, temple, the corner of my eye. I would have stayed there all afternoon if the oven timer hadn't buzzed angrily. I squeezed Jasper's hand and shuffled off to the kitchen.

After my emo moment in the bedroom, lunch itself was rather uneventful. The roasted chicken came out well, juicy but not pink in the middle. As I carved up the bird, I asked Jasper, "Are you a leg man or a breast man?" I _may_ have been a little overly invested in his answer.

With a merry twinkle in his eye, he replied, "I don't objectify my meat." I rolled my eyes and threw a napkin at his head.

When we'd finished the main course, I brought the cake out of the refrigerator. Jasper's face lit up. "That … may be the most amazing baked item I have ever seen," he said.

"It's not like a Bella cake or anything," I shrugged, although secretly I was pleased and proud.

I watched him closely as he took his first bite. As his lips closed around the fork, I held my breath.

"Excuse me," he said after chewing and swallowing, "but I must say a little prayer: 'Our Alice, who art in kitchen, tasty be thy cake.'"

I snorted. "You are such a _dork_!"

"If being a cake-worshipping dork is wrong, I don't want to be right," Jasper said unperturbed, shoveling another forkful into his mouth.

"I read somewhere that Entenmann's bestselling cake is the crumb coffee cake," I said while clearing the table of the dinner plates, "but that the crumbs are made from Entenmann's cakes that didn't sell and went stale."

"Mm-hmm," Jasper mumbled through another mouthful of cake.

"I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere," I said, drawing my knees up to my chest in the wobbly kitchen chair. I left my slice of cake untouched, enjoying too much the image of Jasper so happily stuffing his face with the cake I'd made with my own two hands in this kitchen that until today had seemed as cozy as an operating room. _No place like home_, I thought, hugging myself.

* * *

[1] The Postal Service, "Such Great Heights," _Give Up_, 2003.

[2] "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," from _Life of Brian_ (Terry Jones), 1979.

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**A/N: Sorry this one took so long to put up. It was like pulling TEETH, I tells you, big nasty impacted wisdom teeth.**

**I am told it encourages reviewing if I ask a question here, so here goes: what is your favorite kind of cake?**


	10. The Ghost in You

**A/N: Yep, I'm back. Shoutouts to all my usual peeps (Rav Unicorn girls, Saturday night chat). I also started a new story in case this one gets too angsty for you--it is pure fluff, totally tongue-in-cheek silliness, "The Cullen Family Players Present." It's a series of Cullen-Sweded takes of other works. First up is "Vampire Speed." It's in my profile.**

**Standard Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns. I have student loans from Sallie Mae.**

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**Chapter 10: The Ghost in You  
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_you fit into me _

_like a hook in an eye_

_a fishhook_

_an open eye_

_-Margaret Atwood _[1]

_The boys are circling me. It's part of the staging, so I shouldn't be afraid, but I am. I am terrified. They sing to me through snarled teeth, the stagelights reflecting off their greasy, pimpled faces. They've got "stubble" stipple-sponged on, and stage makeup "dirt," and normally it takes a little focus for me to suspend my disbelief and see them as threatening men, not silly drama club boys. But something is different about tonight. The air crackles with their energy, the way you can smell it in the air when there's going to be a thunderstorm. Mitchell is the head muleteer, and he sings, "Little bird, little bird, in the cinnamon tree."[2] There's nothing friendly in his eyes, even though we've been going out for weeks now. I suppose "going out" is a bit of a stretch, since he never actually _takes_ me anywhere—he just gropes me in the back of his mom's car, which smells of stale McDonald's and his mother's menthol cigarettes. _

_The music gets more frenzied, and the boys start grabbing me. Again, it's part of the staging, but everything feels wild about tonight, out of control. It's too vicious to be just the extra frenzy of performance energy. Mitchell grabs me by my forearms with enough force that I'm certain it'll bruise. My gut is screaming at me, telling me to stop the show, to run offstage, to find Mr. Crandall. But I do none of these things, because "the show must go on." Rule number one. And I can't stop it. I am powerless, even as I feel one of the boys actually grab my breast. That's not part of the staging. I can feel hands all around me, grabbing, taking, and I don't even know who is doing what. The audience members just watch. No one helps me, because they think they think it's just make-believe. Or maybe they know what is going on but choose to do nothing. I see Mitchell give a nod to one of the other muleteers, and he starts pulling something out of his sleeve._

I sat up with a start, stifling a cry. It took me a few moments to realize I was safe in my bed, far from Olympia, far from Mitchell and the boys. The only sound was the ticking of the clock and the steady breathing next to me. The light from the streetlamps filtered through the blinds in my room, painting the sleeping form next to me in orange stripes, a sweet, sleepy tiger.

Jasper looked innocent asleep, his eyelashes surprisingly long. He slept with one hand tucked underneath the pillow. His face was completely relaxed, peaceful. I wondered if I looked anything like that when I slept. I hesitantly put my hand to his face and smoothed some curls away from his forehead. He stirred a little but didn't wake up. My brain tried to wrap itself around the concept of _Jasper in my bed_ and failed miserably.

He was a considerate sleeper, curled on his side, leaving me plenty of room on the narrow bed. I watched him for a while, stroking his forehead. I thought I ought to be more afraid to be alone here with him, but I felt safe. He wouldn't hurt me. I watched his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, until I thought I'd shaken my nightmare off. I lay back down, curling against his back, burying my nose in the nape of his neck.

I waited, inhaling when he inhaled, exhaling with him too. One hundred breaths I counted. Sleep didn't come, so I sat up again. The comforter had slipped down a little, so I pulled it up and over Jasper's shoulders. I didn't want him to get cold.

I hated waking up in the middle of the night because I never knew when I'd be able to fall asleep again. My thoughts were erratic in the dark, and I was afraid of the shadows in my room. I knew it was completely childish, and I often whispered under my breath, _if it's safe in the daylight, it's safe in the dark_. But deep down, I didn't believe that. At night the buzzing came.

When my mother started having her episodes, my grandmother was convinced my mother was weak and letting in the devil. She blamed the Tarot, of course, even though my mom had been so careful to keep the cards hidden inside her pillowcase. She just couldn't accept that maybe my mom was just sick, that it wasn't her choice, that it wasn't because she was lazy or not vigilant. Of course prayer should be able to fix it. And when it didn't, she called my mother hard and willful. And my mother just took it, because she was too far gone to fight back.

And if I were being really honest, I'd say she'd stopped fighting back a long time ago, hadn't stood up to my grandmother since she ran away with my father. I liked to think about her back then. How much bravery it must have taken for her to look my grandmother in the eye and tell her she was walking out that door and never coming back! I was so proud of her. Some nights I'd ask her about it, and her eyes would light up when she remembered that fire within her. She'd tell me stories about driving halfway across the country, of living with no money in a studio apartment with my father.

And then she'd grow quiet, as if suddenly remembering the present, and my face would burn with shame and guilt. "I'm sorry, Mom," I'd say, touching her cheek. I didn't finish my thought, didn't say, _I'm sorry, Mom, sorry I ruined your life_. I was too ashamed even to put it into words.

Even so, my mom would laugh and rumple my hair. "Oh, Mary Alice, what have you got to be sorry for? You are my treasure."

I wanted to believe her so much.

After my mother was gone, the objects she left behind became far more dear to me. The deck of Tarot cards was special, our connection. If I closed my eyes and held the deck, I could imagine her hand on the other side, that we were palm to palm on opposite sides of a wall. Nothing separated us but this thin stack of waxed cardstock.

I became really good at reading the cards, and in college I became known as "that Tarot chick." I didn't mind the label—I was proud to be known for one of my mother's gifts, but without the stigma of being my mother's daughter. It was who Alice Prynne, not Mary Alice Brandon, was, this person I was building from the bottom up. Alice Prynne knew Tarot. She danced with abandon. She giggled and pretended nothing was ever wrong. She never answered questions about her past. She had no history.

It was peaceful for me, the energy I'd feel thrumming through my body when I'd handle the cards and focus on doing a reading. Mostly I did it at parties, in a dark corner far from the Jell-o shots and sticky card tables. I refused to take my cards out unless there was a clean, dry surface for me to lay them down on. Sometimes girls would stop by my room after class, knocking tentatively and asking me to see if that cute boy was interested, or some other superficial thing. I didn't mind, though, because holding the cards made me feel close to my mom.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear my grandmother blaming the cards for inviting in the devil. Of course my mother wasn't ill; she'd been weak and lazy and had let evil take her over. That version of history was easier for my grandmother to accept. I knew she was ridiculous, or, at least, the rational side knew, but a very small part of me believed her.

And one night, I had a dream. Or maybe it wasn't a dream. I still wasn't sure what it was, exactly. I was in my room, asleep, except I could see myself sleeping in the bed from a vantage point above. Suddenly I saw a red light come through my window and settle on my chest. The minute it landed, my whole body started vibrating. At first it felt like the humming I'd feel during a reading, just a bit more intense. But the energy continued to spin and intensify, becoming almost painful. Instead of feeling the energy flow through me, I was being dragged under by the current. _This must be what my grandmother meant_, I thought in a panic. _The devil is coming, and I will be no better than my mother. They'll send me away. I won't know who I am, and no one will be able to find me_. I was quaking with fear and hating myself for not being more careful. She'd warned me, and I'd laughed it off.

I did the only thing I could think of in that situation: I started mumbling the prayers my grandmother forced on us. The words were automatic, and I said them faster and faster, moving my lips quietly in the dark. It seemed to help. But then the red light crept higher, reaching my tongue and making it sluggish and unresponsive. I could no longer form the words. So I thought the words as hard as I could until the light crept higher still, to my brain. And then I was filled only with buzzing and red light and the smell of burning hair. _The Echthroi_,[2] I thought to myself as I stopped fighting and let myself be pulled under.

Just as I'd given up and prepared myself to be swallowed whole, the buzzing stopped, and I was back in my bed, back in my brain. But I'd never _left_ my bed. I woke up in the same position in my bed that I'd been occupying in my dream. So was it a dream? Was it real?

I couldn't take a chance. I packaged up the beloved Tarot deck and hid it in my drawer. But the buzzing never went away completely. It would come back, especially before I'd have a moment of Knowing. All those times in the bar when I'd know what drink someone wanted, I felt the buzzing. I didn't understand why it came back to me, especially when I tried to be good, locking away my cards and willing away the visions and the knowledge whispered into my ear.

If the buzzing weren't connected to the cards, it meant that it was already a part of me, just waiting for me to be weak enough so it could overpower and devour me.

It was only a matter of time.

So why, why did I allow the visions to come with Jasper? Why did I invite the whisperings? I scrunched up my face in the dark and tried to understand it. A sudden catch in Jasper's breathing brought me back to the present. I watched Jasper's sleeping form and was filled with peace. _There_ was my answer. He tethered me to this earth. He made it easier to stop fighting—not because he was trying to let the dark swallow me, but because he made the dark disappear.

I looked at him gratefully. He had no idea how much he'd changed my life already. When I was with him, I wasn't _fighting_ myself all the time. I was just … me. And he made me feel like "me" was an okay person to be.

We'd had a good day. He'd come over for lunch, enjoyed the hell out of my cake. I packed up the leftovers and sent them off with Jasper while we split ways—he had an evening seminar and office hours, and I had my usual shift at the pub.

"I'll come by after class," he said before kissing the tip of my nose and heading out the door. I leaned on the doorjamb and watched him go. I washed the dishes in the sink and tidied up before I had to head to the Unicorn.

Work was unremarkable and gray until Jasper walked through the door a bit after 10. I squealed (yes, really) and did a little pirouette when I saw him come in. Instead of shrinking away or making some snide comment to the fratboys who drunkenly applauded me, I smiled sweetly and dropped a curtsey. From the corner of my eye, I could see Jasper watching our exchange with a smirk on his face. By the time he reached the bar, I already had a Corona with lime waiting for him. "Thank you, pretty lady," he said as he took his usual seat at the bar.

At the end of my shift, he was waiting for me, as usual, outside the Unicorn, leaning against the side of the building with his hands in the pockets of his corduroy jacket. I ran up to him, throwing my arms around his neck to be lifted up in his customary bear hug.

He lowered me slowly back to the ground. "Walk you home?" he asked out of habit.

I'd already made my mind in the bar in those long hours before he'd shown up. "Yes, please," I said, looking at my shoes.

By the time I felt brave enough to look him in the face, Jasper's eyes were wide and twinkling. "Oh! Really? Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said, lacing my fingers with his. I tugged his arm a little as I started off in the direction of the Co(n)vent. "Come on, it's getting late."

We were silent during the walk home. This was unchartered territory for me. Although I'd made this walk home many, many times before, I'd never done it with another person. I leaned against him, sniffed the sleeve of his jacket, and closed my eyes. I could feel corduroy against my cheek, hear our shoes shuffling along the sidewalk. The night was still, the quiet interrupted only by an occasional car driving past. I let Jasper guide me home, knowing that he already knew the way.

As we walked up the stairs, I wondered what Jasper was thinking, if he expected something momentous to happen. I hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed.

"Do you want some tea or anything?" I offered as I flipped on lights and kicked off my shoes.

"Only if you want some, darling," he said, leaning down to unlace his shoes.

I made a pot of chamomile tea and let it steep on the coffee table as we sat on the couch and looked at each other. I think we were both afraid to move. Eventually Jasper reached up a hand to cup my face, brushing his thumb lightly across my eyelid. I let my eyes flutter closed. I could feel him lean in to kiss me.

I leaned in closer and wound my fingers into his hair and kissed him back. No one before had ever kissed me the way Jasper did, softly, tenderly, with little nips on my lower lip, tongue mischievously darting into my mouth. No one had ever been that … _subtle_ before. Or, I supposed, actually affectionate. When others had kissed me, it had felt like they were trying to steal something from me. With Jasper, it always felt like a gift. Before Jasper, I never understood that you were actually supposed to enjoy having someone's tongue in your mouth. It had always been something you just had to _endure_.

I hoped I wasn't too awful a kisser. I tried to mimic his style, the gentle sucking, the little licks and nips. He breathing grew faster, and my heart raced, a little in surprise that I actually had such an effect on him, and a little in fear—an old reflex. I was frustrated at myself for having a fear response to Jasper, but before I could be too upset, he nibbled on my lip in a way that made me cease thinking altogether.

Mid-swoon, my toes in full curl, I could feel Jasper's arm support my head and back as he leaned forward, tipping me down until I was flat on my back on the couch. Once settled in this new position, we both shifted instinctively until we fit into each other's contours, kissing each other hungrily. I arched my back, and Jasper nuzzled my neck. I was vaguely aware that the tea was getting cold.

And then it happened. Jasper pressed up against me, and I could feel how hard he was through his jeans. Part of me was thrilled that I could make him feel that way, just from kissing, but then I panicked, worried I couldn't give him what he wanted, worried about his reaction, worried he wouldn't want someone so broken, worried he'd be angry. _And what happens if he's angry, Alice? You're pinned under him. You live alone. It's three in the morning. Who would hear you if you screamed?_

I … I don't know what got into me, but I just shoved my hands against his chest as hard as I could. Jasper stopped immediately, looking hurt? Sad? Shocked? Maybe all three? He rubbed his sternum where I'd shoved him, but I knew I couldn't have actually injured him.

"Oh, oh god, Jasper, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said, burying my face in my hands. Great, I'd already fucked things up royally. Oh, it was a mistake bringing him home. It was a mistake trying to pretend to be normal. I bit my lip to stop it from quivering, and I brought my hands up to my head, twisting and pulling my hair. I was sitting up with my knees curled up against my chest. I hid my face in my knees.

"Hey, Alice, girl, hey," Jasper said. I could feel his hands on mine, trying to pull them out of my hair. I just held on more tightly. He rubbed my back and talked softly. "I'm sorry. I'm the one who should be apologizing. Are you okay? Please let me see your face, my beautiful girl."

I mumbled into my knees, "How can you call me beautiful? I'm such a disaster."

Jasper was still trying to untangle my fingers from my hair. "Even if I were blind, I'd know you were beautiful."

With my face still hidden, I said, "What, you'd sculpt a cheesy bust of my head and make me look like Lionel Ritchie?"

"Jheri curls and all, sweetheart," he said, putting his forehead to mine and gently clasping my head in his hands.

Despite my misery, I couldn't help giggling. I lifted my head up an inch and peeked out from behind my knees. Jasper's eyes were right there, gazing at me with concern. "There's my girl," he said with relief once he could see I was okay. He tried again to ease my hands out of my hair, and this time I let him.

I let my hands fall limply to my sides, but Jasper took them up in his and kissed my knuckles gently. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

I groaned.

"We don't have to. Whatever you want. I just want you to be okay," he said. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, baby. I hope I didn't scare you. I want you to feel safe."

"It's not you," I said. "I'm a mess. I just … I don't know what happened. I …" I stopped talking. There just was no dignified way to say _I was totally into it until your erection freaked me out_.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No! Of course not," I said, face burning. "This stuff is just … really hard for me to talk about. And I'm just angry with myself. And I think any minute, you are going to run away from me." I laughed bitterly. "I mean, how many times do I have to break down in front of you before you give up on me? Why would you even want to bother with someone like me?"

Jasper squeezed my hands. "Darlin', but we're not talking _someone like you_. There is no _someone like you_. There's only you."

"Oh," was all I could say to that.

"I don't think there is anyone else like you in this whole world."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked, fearing his answer.

"It's the best thing," he said.

"Oh." I studied my toenails. They needed trimming. _Alice, you're avoiding. I know; shut up. I'm working on it._

I took a deep breath. It had to be said. I had to be upfront about this. "Jasper?"

"Yes?"

"What if … what if I told you that I didn't know if I could, you know, _be_ with you?" My toenails were very interesting. _Oh god, please don't let him ask me to be more specific_.

"I don't want to presume, but if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, I'd say that I would be okay with that." He put a hand to my cheek, which still burned from embarrassment.

"You wouldn't … be fed up? Angry? Frustrated? Hate me?"

Jasper cupped my face in his hands and forced me to look up at him. "Alice. Baby. There is nothing you could do to make me hate you. I'm here. I could be anywhere, but I choose to be here, with you. I've, you know, I've seen my share. I know what's out there. And there's no one else like you, no one else who draws me to her when she's near. If you asked me to go away, I would, but I'd always want to come back."

"Why?"

Jasper thought a minute, rubbing the back of his neck. Eventually he said, "Well, now, I'm not sure. I just know it, the way I know my own name. I didn't know my heart was uneasy until I met you, until I discovered how calm my heart could be. Does that make sense?"

I thought about it for a second. "Maybe," I said. "And it's not that I don't _want to_ be, um, _with_ you. But I guess, you know, I guess that part of me is just broken or something."

Jasper looked pained. "Baby, you're not broken. You've just … I mean, I don't know, you've been through stuff—_life_. Life damages us, but we don't break. It might take us a while to find the pieces, but they're never gone. I don't believe they're ever gone for good.

"And you know what? Even if they were gone for good? It doesn't matter. I choose the you that you are today, whole, broken, damaged, perfect."

"I wish I could be the person you deserve, Jasper," I said, picking at a loose thread on my skirt.

"You are everything I want," he said simply, stilling my nervous hand. "And someday, if you trust me enough and want to, we can talk about the other stuff. It's going to be okay."

I could almost believe him. I knew he meant it, that he thought _we'd_ be okay, but I kind of doubted that _I'd_ ever be okay. Well, he wasn't going anywhere for now, at least. "Do you mind … staying with me tonight?" I asked. I just couldn't bear seeing him go, now that he was here.

"What do you mean, darlin'?"

I stood up and started pulling him to my bedroom. "Can you stay?"

He nodded.

So we walked hand in hand to my bedroom. I put Bear-Bear on the dresser and turned down my comforter. I scooped up my pajamas and padded off to the bathroom to change and brush my teeth. When I got back to my room, Jasper was standing right where I'd left him.

"This is me," I said, modeling my flannel pajamas.

"Flannel was never so lucky," Jasper said, grinning. He still hadn't moved from his spot. I supposed he was waiting for a cue from me.

"Boxers or briefs?" I asked.

"Me? Um, boxers."

Boxers weren't too scary. They left a little something to the imagination. "Okay. If you'd be, you know, more comfortable, I'm okay if you, uh, want to… I mean, not wear … um." Shit, this was hard to say without sounding totally wrong. I started again. "If you want to _not wear_ your jeans to bed, that would be all right with me."

"Are you sure, baby?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." I didn't think I could handle the embarrassment of watching Jasper take off his pants, so I crawled under the comforter and hid my head under the pillow.

I could hear unzipping, then the sliding sound of denim being pushed down over skin. "You okay under there?" Jasper called over, sounding amused.

"Um, yes," I mumbled from underneath the pillow. "Just giving you some privacy."

"Should I turn the light off?"

"Yes, please."

When I heard Jasper flip the light switch off, I emerged from underneath the pillow. I could see Jasper's tall form making his way to the bed. "Can you see okay?" I called out.

"Didn't you know, baby? I have sonar." He made weird, high-pitched sounds in falsetto, echoing back the same pitches more softly, as if his voice were bouncing off objects in my room. I threw a sham at him, which he swatted away with a laugh. He walked with his hands in front, feeling around so he wouldn't bump into things.

"Okay, now you _really_ look blind." I started singing, "_Hello? Is it me you're looking for?_"

He joined in with me, "_I can see it in your eyes; I can see it in your smile, you're all I've ever wanted, and my arms are open wide_."[4]

He tripped a little as he got to the bed, but I steadied him. He'd taken off his button-down shirt and wore just his undershirt and boxers. With the darkness to cloak him, I was a bit less embarrassed. He crawled in bed with me, and I snuggled against his chest while he wrapped his arms around me.

Jasper, after a dramatic pause, took a breath and kept singing, so I did too, _allegro con formaggio_. "_'Cause you know just what to say, and you know just what to do, and I want to tell you so much, I love you_ ..."[5]

I was shaking with laughter by the end, but in the back of my head, I was thinking, _Shit, if we sing, "I love you," does it count? _I decided it didn't matter. Why complicate things? But still, I smiled happily to myself, thinking that maybe, maybe it counted. Just a little.

And just as I'd imagined when I lay in bed alone all week, thinking of Jasper, he rubbed lazy circles on my back as I drifted off to sleep.

***

I'd fallen asleep easily and slept soundly, until the nightmare had woken me up in a terror. So here I was, in bed with a sleeping Jasper, unable to go to sleep again, fearing the return of the buzzing.

My mind was racing, so I took a chance. I whispered, "Jasper?"

He stirred a little and rolled onto his back.

I found his hand and squeezed it. "Jasper?" I asked again, a little louder.

I felt gentle pressure in my hand as he squeezed back. "What is it?" he answered through a thick yawn.

"Jasper, I had a bad dream."

"Oh! Baby, come here," he said, returning to his side, drawing me close, and enfolding me completely in his arms.

His eyes stayed closed the whole time, but he never stopped kissing my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose. He rubbed my back. I started relaxing a little, even getting a little sleepy again. Warm and completely surrounded by Jasper, I couldn't imagine fearing the dark now.

As if knowing exactly what I needed in that moment, Jasper started to sing softly, his voice a little raspy from being asleep. "_A man in my shoes runs a light, and all the papers lied tonight, but falling over you is the news of the day. Angels fall like rain, and love is all of heaven away … inside you the time moves, but she don't fade, the ghost in you, she don't fade…_"[6]

"Thank you," I whispered against Jasper's chest.

He didn't stop singing, but I knew from his gentle squeeze that he'd heard me. I fell asleep with Jasper's lips breathing Psychedelic Furs lyrics against my forehead, hands tracing circles on my back, all while his heartbeat provided a firm, steady accompaniment.

* * *

[1] Margaret Atwood, "You fit into me," originally published in _Power Politics_ (Toronto: Anansi, 1971).

[2] Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh, "Little Bird," _Man of La Mancha_ (1965).

[3] While the word "Echthroi" is of Greek origin (Εχθροί, meaning "enemies") and is used in various translations of the Bible, the use here is from Madeline L'Engle's _Time Trilogy_. "If we are Namers, the Echthroi are un-Namers, non-Namers" (_A Wind in the Door_ [New York: Dell, 1973], 89). They "Annihilate… Negate… Extinguish… X" (86).

[4] Lionel Ritchie, "Hello," _Can't Slow Down_, 1983.

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Psychedelic Furs, "The Ghost in You," _Mirror Moves_, 1984.

* * *

**A/N: That's all she wrote, at least for tonight. Do you have a favorite 80s video moment of cheese?**


	11. Pieces of Me You’ve Never Seen

**A/N: Usual thanks to the Rav UUs and Saturday night chat. Breaking [Dawn] news: In the Days of Auld Lang Syne: Counterpoint (Bella's POV) is now up, written by the lovely PortiaKhalo. Check it out in my faves! Also, if you want to laugh your sweet ass off, check out the brand spankin' new Cullens of Hazzard, written by two of my favorite people, shalu and CarminMoon, also in my faves. Lily Zen, I owe you a PM. **

**I've started a playlist for Fix You in my profile. I'll be updating it as I remember what all needs to be in there.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer is all up in dis bidness. I own only bidness time socks.**

* * *

**Chapter 11: Pieces of Me You've Never Seen**

_You'll say, don't fear your dreams; it's easier than it seems_

_You'll say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high_

_But never is a promise, and you can't afford to lie_

_-Fiona Apple[1]_

Behind my closed eyes, I could sense the daylight filling my room, but I didn't want to wake up. In my still-drowsy stupor, I was vaguely aware of arms around me, a hand rubbing my back, little kisses on my neck. I was wrapped in a cocoon of awesome. I stretched a little and heard a voice say, "Are you awake, sleepyhead?"

"Mmmmm," I said.

"Is that a yes _mmmmm_ or a no _mmmmm_?"

"It's a mmmmm_ mmmmm_."

"Okay then."

I was so comfortable that I didn't want to move, but I also couldn't wait one moment longer to see him. My hands felt as though they were swimming in syrup as I brought them up to my face. I rubbed my eyes and yawned. I stretched again and opened my eyes.

Jasper was looking at me with a grin on his face. "You are utterly charming when you wake up, you know," he said. "Very Animal Planet."

I playfully bit his shoulder, probably not helping the Animal Planet comparison. "I … I don't even know what to say to that."

"No, man, it's like …" Jasper put on a Nature Documentary Narrator voice. "_In the early morning light, the baby tufted puffin burrows into her nest and yawns adorably, seeking her breakfast_."

"Jasper Whitlock, as soon as I am more awake, I am going to do a Google Image search for 'tufted puffin,' and god help you if it's a creepy, beady-eyed freakshow."

Jasper swallowed hard, practically audibly, like a cartoon. "Erm, can I amend my previous comment then? Honestly, I think you look more like a dik-dik, but I didn't think you'd take kindly to be called a dik-dik without proper warning. But have you seen those guys? They're _unreal_. Like, you wonder where those little fuckers buy their eyeliner. And what currency they use, and where they keep it, not having pockets or opposable thumbs. Actually, how they apply it, for that matter, with their wee little hooves. Or even considering evolution and survival of the fittest, how 'looks like you're wearing sexy eyeliner even though you are some sort of crazy ass antelope' is a trait advantageous to natural selection. Nature is confusing."

Over the course of his treatise on dik-diks, I found myself hiding my face in his chest and shaking with laughter. After wheezing for a few minutes, I managed to get out, "I can't even _begin_ to understand the way your mind works. Am I to understand that you have … a _thing_ for antelopes? Did you just call them _sexy_?"

Jasper drummed his fingers lightly along my back, and I could feel him smiling against my hair. "I said the _eyeliner_ was sexy. Although I must admit … I am puzzled by the dik-dik."

I got serious for a minute and looked up at him through my lashes. "It's … really nice to wake up with you," I said shyly. And I meant it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this happy. If I'd known waking up with someone could be this nice, I would have done it ages ago.

Except … no. Not just "someone." Only Jasper. This was right. _He_ was right.

In the light of day, I couldn't even remember what it felt like to be afraid of him. I snuggled in closer, twining my legs with his. I reached up and tangled my fingers in Jasper's hair, scooching up for a kiss.

"I'm, um, really sorry about last night," I said, feeling sheepish.

"Ain't no thing," he said. "Really." He grasped my chin with his thumb and forefinger and looked me right in the eye. "I need to know that you believe me."

I looked into his eyes for a second, but I couldn't handle his piercing gaze. I was still ashamed of my behavior and frustrated with myself. My eyes dropped, and I studied the fabric of his undershirt. Finally I mumbled, "It's complicated."

"I know, baby, I know," he said, rubbing my back soothingly. "It's okay."

"I mean, I believe you, but that doesn't mean I forgive myself." I guess that was as good an explanation for now.

"Baby, what have you got to forgive yourself for?"

I shivered, his words echoing so much my mother's.

Jasper seemed to take note of my silence, giving me a little squeeze and saying, "Let's get breakfast, my sweet dik-dik."

I glared at him, then smiled evilly and leaped out of bed, taking the comforter with me like a big superhero cape. As I walked out of the bedroom, I heard Jasper yelp from the cold. I called over my shoulder, "That's what you get!"

I muttered darkly about dik-diks as I shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom, but I was smiling. I was pretty sure he was smiling too.

When I returned to the bedroom, Jasper had already gotten dressed and was sitting patiently on the edge of the mattress with his hair sticking out in all directions and flopping over his eyes. His bedhead was beyond adorable. I grabbed his face and said, "You are _ridiculous cute_." I smushed his face with kisses, and he pulled me onto his lap.

"Mmmmm," I said.

"Mmmmm," he said.

"Breakfast," I reminded.

"Right," he replied.

Eventually I found the willpower to scoot off of his lap. "Breakfast," I repeated. He nodded and headed to the bathroom.

I dressed while he did … whatever boys do in the bathroom in the mornings. I put on an off-white crocheted tunic over a long-sleeve gray tissue tee, dark jeans, and my tallest t-strap character shoes. Now that I no longer did theater, I had no reason to try to save the soles, and they made me feel sexy. While I waited for Jasper, I put the comforter back on my bed and smiled, noticing the bed smelled a little like him.

It was my turn now to perch at the edge of the bed and wait. I crossed and uncrossed my legs at the ankles. When Jasper came back, I saw with a little disappointment that he'd managed to tame his hair. Oh well, maybe I didn't want anyone else to know how cute his bedhead was. I smiled to myself as I considered that maybe his bedhead belonged just to me.

While I studied him, he took a moment to look me up and down and said, "_Now_ who's ridiculous cute?"

I grinned at him like a kid, all teeth, and jumped up, grabbing his hand and pulling him out the door.

I led Jasper to a diner a few blocks from the Convent. It was an overcast day, but as far as I was concerned, it was the most beautiful morning I'd ever seen. It occurred to me that this was a time of day I'd never been with Jasper, which made it extra precious to me, something new to experience with him by my side. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd let go of his hand and had happily executed a bunch of _chaînés _turns.

"Are … are we in a musical?" asked Jasper not unkindly, glancing over his shoulder. He stage-whispered, "Where's the fourth wall?"

I stopped mid-turn. "Oh. It's the shoes. And you. Sorry." I blushed.

"No, no, I like it. I just wanted to know if I needed to be putting on my dance belt."

I laughed. "Do you even know what a dance belt is?"

Jasper looked offended. "I've seen enough footage of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But please, turn, turn some more, _ma petite danseuse_. I wish I had a cane so I could rap it on the floor like Debbie Allen in _Fame_."

I laughed and did a few more _chaînés_, stopping when I reached an intersection. "That's probably enough for today. If I turn too much, I might throw up. I'm a little out of practice."

Jasper applauded, tipping an imaginary hat. He held out his hand as the light changed, and I chasséed across the intersection. I just couldn't stop dancing. Jasper's legs were so long compared to mine that he only had to take slightly longer strides to keep up. He twirled me once as we reached the curb on the other side, and I stood on my tiptoes to give him a kiss.

By the time we reached the diner, we'd managed to hit the sweet spot between the early morning rush and the lazy weekend brunch stragglers, easily scoring a booth. Our waitress, sporting a hilarious and inexplicable bouffant, raised an eyebrow quizzically as I slid right next to Jasper on the same side of the booth, but I didn't care. I propped my feet up on the empty bench on the other side and leaned against Jasper's arm.

"You're going to order waffles, aren't you?" I asked without thinking. He hadn't even opened his menu yet.

"How do you do that?" he asked.

I grimaced. "I just, I don't know, I can see what you want sometimes. Mundane stuff, mostly. You probably don't believe in that kooky shit, right? With your rational science and stuff?"

He frowned and fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers. "Just because it hasn't been proven doesn't mean it can't exist. I don't like to rule anything out. I think it's arrogant to think we already understand everything in the universe."

"I wish I could turn it off."

"Why would you want to do that?" he asked in surprise.

I leaned down and rested my cheek against the table. "I don't know. I guess I don't know where the images come from. I'm afraid of losing myself, of becoming just like…" I cut myself off and bolted upright.

Jasper brushed the back of his hand along my cheek. "Becoming like what?"

I gritted my teeth, trying to regain control. "Um, Miss Cleo," I said lamely. That had been close. It was so easy to let my guard down around Jasper. Honestly, it was a shame his chosen field was psychiatry and not some sort of espionage or criminal interrogation. I had a feeling he could get anyone to tell him anything.

Being around him relaxed me so much, made it feel as if all the guardian voices in my head had passed out in a field of poppies. It was dangerous. He made me want to tell him everything, about Olympia, about my mother. But I just … couldn't. He'd said last night that there was nothing I could do to make him hate me, but that didn't mean there was nothing I could do to make him afraid to be around me. Or make him want to lock me away.

It killed me not to tell him, that there was a big part of me that he'd never know or understand. And it made me feel like a fraud, or worse yet, a grifter, that I'd somehow conned him into being with me. The person he thought he was with was just a small part of who I was, the edited-for-TV version. But I'd played out scenarios in my head countless times where I'd told him the whole truth, even thought about blurting out, "My mother's in an insane asylum, and I'm probably crazy too, how about those Mariners?" Just do it quickly and get it over with, like ripping off a band-aid.

There was no version in my head that ended well.

I did consider that perhaps I wasn't giving him enough credit. Maybe in some magical world, he'd tell me it was okay, that it didn't matter if I some day I ended up crazy as a loon. He seemed so understanding about everything else. But "everything else" was small potatoes compared to my tenuous hold on sanity.

"It's part of who you are," Jasper said.

I jumped. Had I been speaking out loud? "What?"

"I mean, if you can, you know, _know_ things. You shouldn't feel ashamed."

Oh, he was back on the psychic thing. "Well, what if …" my voice trailed off. I held his hand and squeezed it for strength. "What if it's _not_ part of me? What if it comes from a bad place?" I added softly, "I have bad dreams sometimes."

"I don't believe anything in you could come from a bad place," he said simply. "Alice, you're practically … fashioned from light."

I smiled sadly. "I don't know about that, but that's sweet of you to say." I wished I could see myself through his eyes. Determined to be cheerful, I asked, "What should I order? I don't know what dik-diks usually order in diners."

Jasper was under the impression that dik-diks liked cheese omelets with a side of corned beef hash, so I nibbled on that while he made short work of the tower of waffles. He was right about the corned beef hash. There was something about questionable meat that came in a can with a multitude of perfectly identical cubes of potatoes. It was complete space-age non-food, and it was fucking delicious.

"You're going to have to roll me home," I said, holding my hands across my middle.

"Only if I can sing the Oompa-Loompa song," he said, helping me into my jacket.

My shoes started to pinch a little on the way home—that's what I got for dancing so much on the way to the diner. I had no regrets though. Even with the pain from overeating, it was hard not to dance, especially as Jasper Oompa-Loompa, doo-bah-dee-doo'ed all the way home. When we got back to the Convent, I made Jasper wait for me as I unbuckled my shoes. I thought I caught him checking out my ass. It made me smile, and I pretended to have trouble getting the second buckle undone so he could have a longer look. I slipped the shoes off and slung them across my back, holding them by the straps. Jasper towered over me as I stood in my bare feet. "I just want to put you in my pocket, sweet pea," he said, kissing me on the top of my head. I laughed and began to walk up the stairs. The stairs were cold but felt good against my sore feet.

Once inside my apartment, Jasper flopped onto my couch, and I followed suit. I lay with my head in his lap and closed my eyes while he played with my hair. If I were a cat, I'd be purring. If I were Eartha Kitt, a still-living Eartha Kitt at least, I'd probably be purring too.

I nearly fell asleep again in a post-corned beef hash coma, but I forced myself to stay awake. I sat up drowsily and turned to face Jasper. I was sitting on my heels and leaned forward to kiss him along his jaw. His mouth curled up in a smile, and he wrapped his arms around me. I shifted so my legs were lying across his lap. This was nice. He raked his fingernails up and down my arms, sending tingles all through me. Wow. I didn't know arms could feel so good.

Jasper brushed his hands lightly along my stomach and up my sides, always slowly, always gently. It was a lazy kind of hunger, a slow, burning desire, not a raging fire, but deceptively graying embers that glowed orange in a breeze. My lack of fear surprised me. I wanted to be consumed.

My pulse pounded in my ears as we kissed and his hands went on their lazy circuit, always grazing just by my breasts but never touching. It was beginning to be maddening. Trembling, I placed my hands on top of his. He stopped moving immediately, probably thinking that I was on the verge of freaking out again.

I gulped, not wanting to lose my nerve. I did a quick mental scan. Nope, still not afraid. I guided his hands inward, inching his hands closer. Jasper was still as a statue. I was breathing raggedly. Somewhere in the back of my head a voice hissed, _Asking for it. You're asking for it._

_And what if I am?_ I thought angrily. _He won't hurt me. I want this. It's okay to want, isn't it?_

_Are you ready to take responsibility if you get hurt? When it happens, it'll be your fault, you know,_ it snapped.

_It seems I get hurt anyway, don't I? So does it matter if I'm the one making it happen? At least I'll be doing _something_; at least I'll _feel_ something_, I mentally retorted.

The voice was pissing me off, and that burst of anger was the last bit of courage I needed to pull Jasper's hands to my breasts, to give him the all clear. Now it was up to him. He was looking at me with concern, eyes widening. I bit my lip and nodded a little. He took a breath, ostensibly to ask me if this was what I really wanted. I knew I'd never be able to say it out loud, so I just kissed him hard before he could speak, sucking on his lower lip and running my tongue along it.

Hesitantly, he ran his hand along my breast, letting his thumb rest and press against my nipple. Um, _wow_. He was cautious, watching me for my reaction. _Did you not just hear me think, "Um, wow"?_ I arched my back to push my breast more into his palm. He was still staring at me. _Do I need to hire a skywriter? _I slid my hand behind his head and pulled it toward me.

Finally getting the hint, he started kissing down my neck, cupping my breasts gently, continuing to circle his thumbs languidly over my nipples. I had no idea I could feel so good, so fucking good. He nuzzled my breasts through the crocheted tunic, and he heat of his breath even through the layers of clothing ignited a fire in my belly and slightly more … below the Mason-Dixon.

"Mmmmm," I found myself saying again. Oh, I guess I knew how to purr after all.

Between teasing nips and sweet kisses, Jasper murmured, "Is that a good _mmmmm_ or a bad _mmmmm_?"

"It's a don't-you-dare-stop _mmmmm_, you blockhead," I answered a bit breathlessly, twisting my fingers in his hair.

"That's what I thought," he said, seeming to address my breasts directly.

I was both frustrated and grateful that my tunic too tight for Jasper to get under it. I'd have to peel the whole thing off, and I knew I wasn't ready for that to happen. I wanted it. I didn't want it. I wanted it. _Oh god, did I want it_. But no, I didn't want to spoil this moment. I felt already that I'd made huge progress today, and I didn't want to backtrack. I didn't want to have another freakout, didn't want to end the day ashamed again. As it was now, I was kind of fucking proud of myself. I rolled my eyes at myself for being proud at letting Jasper feel me up. But by god, it felt like an accomplishment. And I hadn't just _let_ him do it. I'd _made_ it happen. I'd made him make me feel good, sexy: like a woman, not a scared little girl. That was me. I couldn't help grinning from ear to ear.

"What are you thinking about, beautiful?" asked Jasper, eyes twinkling.

"I was just wondering if it would be completely inappropriate to sing the theme from _Rocky_ right now," I said, cupping his face in my hands and pressing my forehead against his.

"Depends on if I'm the Rocky or the Apollo in this scenario," he said.

"You're the Adrian," I teased.

"Crap," he said, laughing and shaking his head.

I kissed him again, willing him to begin the next round.

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[1] Fiona Apple, "Never Is a Promise," _Tidal_, 1996.

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**A/N: I truly am puzzled by the dik-dik, but if Alice had an animal equivalent, I think it would be the dik-dik. Not just because it's fun to say. Dik-dik. Awesome.**

***New for this chapter*: Reviews get a teaser for the next chapter!**


	12. A Mad Tea Party

**A/N: Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing. Your reviews are like the awesome crunchy marshmallows inside Lucky Charms, little bites of awesome in a sea of less interesting quasi-roughage. I wanted to give a special thank you to Grace for writing me the kind of review we all dream about receiving when we sit down and write. It got me through a very trying week, and I've got it saved for when I'm having a bad day. Thank you. **

**Usual thanks to Rav UU/Saturday night chat, and our master continuity editor, Becca Graymoor.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer blah blah blah, you know the drill.**

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**Chapter 12: A Mad Tea-Party**

_The movement of the tentacles was as rhythmic and flowing as the dance of an undersea plant, and lying there, cradled in the four strange arms, Meg, despite herself, felt a sense of security that was deeper than anything she had known since the days when she lay in her mother's arms in the old rocking chair and was sung to sleep._

_-Madeline L'Engle _[1]

"Oh, shit, what time is it?" I untangled myself from Jasper as I noticed the light fading outside. My hair was completely mussed; Jasper's was back to full-on bedhead. My lips felt swollen, bee-stung, and my stomach was a whole goddamn butterfly orchard. Wait, did butterflies hang out in orchards? A field of butterflies? A phalanx of butterflies? Whatever, there were a lot of fucking butterflies somewhere in their natural habitat. And those butterflies were probably fucking, or whatever butterflies did to make new butterflies. I thought about asking Mr. Animal Planet if he knew, but then I thought that perhaps he'd be puzzled, not having been a passenger on this particular train of thought.

Jasper extracted his arm from somewhere behind my head to glance at his watch. "It's almost four," he breathed into my ear, nibbling a little on my earlobe.

Four? That meant we'd been, I guess the schoolyard term was _heavy petting_, for more than two hours. It felt like a dream, a warm, wonderful dream. It may seem strange, but what it made me think of was that bit in _A Wrinkle in Time_ when Meg Murray is frozen and half dead and being revived by the strange, blind creature she names _Aunt Beast_. I didn't think Jasper would take very kindly to being called either "aunt" or "beast"—well, perhaps he would enjoy being called_ beast _in a virile, sexy way, but in any case, I kept my thoughts to myself.

I didn't think I was capable of ever feeling this way: safe and turned on and wanting more but not feeling bad about myself. Maybe this was the place I needed to stay forever. I had a fleeting thought that maybe this was as good as it would ever get for me, that anything beyond this comfort zone would lead to fear on my part and frustration on Jasper's. I felt as though we were teetering at the top of a Ferris wheel, in this moment believing we were capable of flight, but too soon swinging back downward like the earthbound mortals we really were. Maybe this was as good as we'd ever be, I thought sadly.

But then I pushed those thoughts away. Why should I believe this was the best things would ever be? What if this were just the beginning? My heart stuttered and leaped in my chest when I considered that I could feel even better than this, my mind reeling at the mere possibility of reaching a higher high.

And then I wondered if thinking this way was hubris, Icarus flying too closely to the sun with manmade wings, on borrowed divinity.

And then I stopped thinking altogether, because Jasper had started nipping down the side of my neck. I managed to sigh, "Mrs. Fitzsimmons."

Jasper stopped what he was doing. "What did you just call me? Do I resemble a … married Irish woman? It's the hair, isn't it?"

I smacked him lightly on the arm and shook my head. "Mrs. Fitzsimmons is my neighbor, and I promised I'd come over for tea."

"Oh," Jasper said, all business now, sitting up, smoothing out rumpled clothing, combing his fingers through his glorious hair.

"Do you want to come with me?" I asked, threading my index finger through one of his belt loops. "You don't have to. I know hanging out with random elderly strangers isn't terribly exciting."

"Are you kidding? Have you _seen_ _Harold and Maude_? Or _Driving Miss Daisy_? Jessica Tandy, _mrrow_."

I smacked him not so lightly on the arm. "Leave poor Mrs. Fitzsimmons alone. I don't think her heart can take that much excitement."

I stood up and adjusted my clothes. Over the course of the afternoon, my top had twisted almost all the way around my torso. Jasper watched me with amusement before helping tug the crocheted tunic back to its proper position. And then he used the tunic to tug me back down onto his lap. I was in danger of getting lost in his embrace again before I managed to pull myself away. At this rate, we'd be here all day—which wasn't inherently a bad thing, but I did promise Mrs. Fitzsimmons I'd come over.

I reluctantly stood up again and headed to the kitchen to gather up the packages of Pepperidge Farms cookies. "Are you serious about coming with me?" I called out.

"Of course I am, sweet pea."

I smiled at the nickname and began putting the packets of cookies into the little basket I used when going to tea. I was feeling nervous and maybe a little proud about presenting Jasper to Mrs. Fitzsimmons. It was a melancholy kind of excitement, though, because there was another, more important person I wanted to introduce him to. _She_ should have been here to give him a hard time and then squeal with me when he was out of earshot. But to wish for my mother to be here, to be a sentient part of my adult life, would be as silly as wishing I could spin straw to gold.

I pawed through the pantry and nestled a new package of loose tea by the parcels of cookies—I couldn't remember if we were running low. While in the pantry, I fetched my knitting and gently laid it on top of the cookies and tea packets. I headed back to the living room with the basket slung over my arm.

"Where's your little red cape?" he said, observing my basket.

"If I'm Little Red, does that make you the Big Bad Whitlock?" I asked.

"You don't know the half of it," he grinned, baring his teeth in a sexy snarl. I suddenly felt very warm.

***

With Jasper by my side, I knocked tentatively on Mrs. Fitzsimmons' door. "It's Alice," I called. "Sorry I'm late."

I could hear Mrs. Fitzsimmons shuffle to the door. "Edgar was just wondering when you'd show up," she said as she opened the door wide. She stopped and craned her neck to take in Jasper's full height. "And who is this tall fella?"

Jasper extended his hand. "Jasper Whitlock, ma'am," he said with a little bow. "Alice said I could accompany her to tea—I hope that's all right."

Mrs. Fitzsimmons took his hand in both of her tiny ones and peered into his face. "Well, don't you have the sweetest face this side of the Continental Divide!" she declared after looking him over. She turned to me and said in what she must have imagined was a whisper, "_Alice, he's a dreamboat_!"

I blushed furiously but grinned like an idiot. "I think so too," I tried to whisper back discreetly.

"What was that?" she asked at normal volume.

"She said that she thinks I'm a dreamboat too," said Jasper loudly, looking at me with an impish smile.

"Smartass," I muttered, poking Jasper in the ribs.

Mrs. Fitzsimmons clapped her hands with glee. "It's a proper tea party! Let's get the good hats!" She shooed us inside and shut the door.

I immediately busied myself in the kitchen, putting the teakettle on, arranging the cookies on a plate. I rummaged around the cabinets to find the loose tea. Edgar Allen Poe circled my ankles and purred expectantly. I could hear Mrs. Fitzsimmons ordering Jasper around in the hallway, getting him to bring down all the hatboxes from the top shelf in the closet.

"English Breakfast or Earl Grey?" I called out.

"Let's have the Earl in honor of your gentleman caller," Mrs. Fitzsimmons answered. _Gentleman caller? _Christ, I hope Jasper wasn't ready to bolt for the door.

I could hear her saying to him, "No, I _do_ need you to take down all of the boxes. All of them. We need to make an educated decision, which means we have to see _all_ the hats. That box is probably older than your mother, so treat it with respect." I laughed to myself—Mrs. Fitzsimmons could be such a bossy broad.

"Yes, ma'am," Jasper answered dutifully before erupting in a sneeze. Poor thing—it had been months since we'd taken out _all_ of the hats—possibly last Easter. The dust must have been out of control.

"Bless you!" I trilled as I scooped the leaves into the tea press. I could never measure out tea without thinking about Prufrock, even if I were using teaspoons and not coffee spoons.

I decided to let Jasper off the hook and end the one-on-one with Mrs. F. I strode into the hallway to find hatboxes lined up along the floor, on top of the coffee table, on the sofa.

Mrs. Fitzsimmons beamed at me. "So nice to have a tall fella around," she said. "Didn't need to bring out the stepladder or anything. Might have to ask him to change a few lightbulbs while I have him here. Now, which hat will you have, dearie?"

I screwed my mouth up, concentrating. "May I wear the Marlene Dietrich _Shanghai Express_ one?"

I knew she'd know which hat I was talking about immediately. "Of course, dearie!" She did a slow walk in the hallway and around the living room. "I think that one is in one of the striped boxes," she murmured. She closed her eyes, hummed tunelessly, and turned in a slow circle with her arms out. "Now, where are you?" Her eyes snapped open, and she tottered over to a striped hatbox by the umbrella stand. "This one," she said, nudging the box with her square-toed shoe.

I knelt and gently lifted the lid off. There was the Juliet cap with its glossy black feathers. I reverently placed it on my head, pulling down the birdcage veil over my eyes. "How do I look?" I asked, turning to Jasper.

"Marlene Dietrich ain't got nothing on you, baby," he said, nodding with approval.

"And you, Mrs. Fitzsimmons? What will you wear today?" I asked.

"Peacock feathers, I think," she said. She did the same slow walk and spin with her eyes closed before selecting a fascinator with peacock feathers sticking out at crazy angles. She quickly enlisted Jasper to help her pin the hat to her thinning, bluish hair. I wanted to watch, but the teakettle began to whistle, so I left the two while I went to look after the tea.

After I'd given Edgar his customary saucer of weak tea and milk, I poured the remainder of the steeped tea into the bone china teapot I'd heated with the remaining hot water in the kettle. I fixed up the tray with the teapot, plate of cookies, teaspoons, cream, sugar, and cut lemon wedges. I still wasn't sure if it was some major faux pas to put cream into Earl Grey (Mrs. Fitzsimmons always took hers with lemon), but I didn't care. I preferred my tea cloudy and opaque. Indecipherable.

I don't know what I expected to see when I walked to the living room with the heavy tea tray, but it certainly wasn't Jasper wearing the largest, fluffiest hat in Mrs. Fitzsimmons' collection. The hat was gigantic—the size of a small satellite dish—and zebra-striped. About twelve stuffed birds too many roosted creepily in the piles of mesh netting scattered about the brim. The hat was a veritable PSA for the Don't Drink and Milliner movement. Mrs. Fitzsimmons watched me stop in my tracks at the sight of him.

"Doesn't he look divine?" asked Mrs. Fitzsimmons, a naughty twinkle in her eye. "I don't normally let anyone wear my Ascot hat, but Jasper insisted."

I looked incredulously to Jasper, who mouthed very clearly, "No, I did not."

I stifled a laugh and carefully placed the tray on the coffee table. I went to the china closet, brought over three sets of teacups and saucers, and began serving the tea, a more demure version of my job at the pub. Once we were all settled, I took a moment to survey the room. If Jasper felt uncomfortable sitting on the _Golden Girls_-esque chintz sofa with a ridiculous ladies' hat on his head, he didn't let on. He held his teacup delicately, pinky out, wearing the mass of netting and stuffed birds with a quiet, Southern dignity. What a man.

"Well, now!" Mrs. Fitzsimmons began now that I was seated with them and had pulled out my knitting. "How did you meet this fancy fella?"

"We met at work, on New Year's Eve. Remember how I told you it was the big costume party?"

"Right, you were Rapunzel, weren't you?" she said, dipping a Milano cookie into her tea.

Jasper shook his head, sending the birds wobbling slightly. "No, ma'am, she was Alice in Wonderland." He smiled, maybe remembering. I smiled too.

"Alice was Alice?" exclaimed Mrs. Fitzsimmons. "Now, that doesn't seem right." She put her cookie down and tapped a finger on her forehead. "Didn't you tell me you were going as Rapunzel? I thought you mentioned …" She trailed off, looking confused.

I hated for her to think she was being absentminded, so I butted in. "No, you're right, Mrs. Fitzsimmons. I was going to be Rapunzel, but I changed my mind at the last minute." My hands were shaking a bit, so I put my teacup down and grabbed my knitting instead.

"I didn't know that," said Jasper. "Was that why you had that blonde wig?"

Oh, I was hoping he'd forgotten that. I started knitting seed stitch furiously: knit, purl, knit, purl, alternating the yarn in front and behind my work.

"Blonde! Oh, lovey, blonde hair would suit you," said Mrs. Fitzsimmons. "I wish I'd seen it."

"Oh, well I returned everything to the costume shop," I mumbled. _Knit, purl, knit, purl_.

Jasper seemed to sense my discomfort and said kindly, "Everything suits Alice."

I looked up briefly and smile-grimaced at him. _Knit, purl, knit, purl_. Why couldn't I just smile back at him? What was I hiding from, anyway? I hated feeling like a liar all the time around him. Some song lyrics floated into my head, "And I am a ghost to everyone I know, and it feels so free, but it's so cold, it's so cold."[2] So fucking cold was right.

_Maybe you can show him just a little bit, and see if he runs away_. Well, that was a terrifying prospect. But maybe it would feel better than being a fraud. I tucked the thought in the back of my head. I could tell him some of it, maybe. Wouldn't it be a relief not to carry it all inside?

I imagined myself saying the words to him but was hit with a wave of dizziness. I was surprised at the force of my urge to run out the door, feel my feet slapping on the concrete on the stairs, retreat to my home, lean against my front door, safe from the wolves outside. But I didn't want to scare poor Mrs. Fitzsimmons, nor did I want to have to explain my behavior to her later. I fought for control and calm, trying to stop the panic response. Tea, knitting, Jasper wearing a dozen dead birds. Mrs. Fitzsimmons' kind face. Musky bergamot on my tongue. _You are here, Alice; you are here._

I managed a smile. "I've forgotten the napkins. Does anyone need anything while I'm up?" I laid my knitting on the arm of the sofa and walked calmly to the kitchen. When I was alone, I squatted on the floor with my head between my knees. I put my palms on the linoleum tile, spreading my fingers wide, pretending to be a tree frog. I examined the awful floral pattern on the tile visible through the spaces in between my fingers. I'd be okay. I just needed a few minutes here. Deep breaths.

"Baby, are you okay?" I jumped when I heard Jasper's voice near, too near. He was standing in the doorway, looking at me with concern.

"Y-yes," I stammered, straightening up too quickly and getting a head rush. I swayed, but Jasper was right there, steadying me, even in that ridiculous hat.

"Did something back there upset you?"

I chewed my lower lip thoughtfully, trying to think of a way to explain what had happened. I didn't even know if I could.

"It's hard for you to combine your worlds, isn't it?" Jasper asked quietly.

I slowly nodded. I thought a while before speaking. "This is weird. I mean, I asked you here. I wanted you here; I wanted you to meet her. But then … I don't know. I don't know how to be," I said, wringing my hands. God, I sounded stupid. And crazy.

"I think you're doing wonderfully," he said, tipping my head up with a finger under my chin.

"That's nice of you to say," I mumbled, "but I feel like … I don't know, like a double-exposed image. Like there are two of me, fractured, not lining up properly. That probably didn't make any sense." I laid my hand on top of the hand Jasper had placed against my cheek.

"You may feel those sides of you pulling against yourself, but all I see is Alice. No matter who you decide to be, it'll still be Alice in there." Jasper stroked my cheek softly with his thumb.

I nodded again and closed my eyes. It was hard to take him entirely seriously in the Hat. "I'll be okay; just give me a minute. We should probably head back. I don't want to abandon poor Mrs. Fitzsimmons."

"She's fantastic. I just adore her," Jasper said.

I looked at him with relief. "Isn't she, though? I was worried she'd scared you off." I motioned toward his hat.

Jasper laughed silently, inadvertently making the birds on the hat jiggle and dance. "Granted, it's not something I'd choose for myself, but I'm growing rather fond of it. I feel like I'm on safari, or in the Macy's Parade."

Suddenly Mrs. Fitzsimmons yelled from the living room, "What are you two doing in there? Don't scandalize Edgar Allen Poe."

Jasper looked puzzled until I said, "Her cat."

"Of course," he laughed. "I'm going to go back there, okay?"

"Yes, thanks," I said.

He turned and strode out boldly. "Mrs. Fitzsie," he said, "I'd never take advantage of a young woman, and certainly not in front of impressionable cats. And absolutely not while wearing such a fine chapeau."

"If you say so," she replied, sounding not entirely convinced. "Fitzsie, eh? No one's ever called me that. I like it."

The rest of the afternoon was uneventful but pleasant. Jasper was enlisted to hold Mrs. Fitzsimmons' new hank of yarn while she wound it into a ball, and I made good progress on the tea cozy. When the tea had long cooled, Mrs. Fitzsimmons—or Fitzsie, as she now insisted we call her—slapped her hand on the armchair, sending up a cloud of dust. "Now, why are two young people in love spending time with an old woman when they should be out having the time of their lives?"

I looked up from my knitting, panicking again that Jasper would bolt, but his eyes were merely crinkling from the sudden smile on his face.

"You know I love being with you, Mrs. Fi—Fitzsie," I insisted.

"Bah! You spend some time with this fine gentleman," she said, getting up with surprising speed for such an old woman and poking me in the arm with her knitting needle. "Scoot! I want to watch 'Wheel of Fortune,' anyway, and you know it distracts me to have you here."

"All right," I said, "but let me clean up first, okay?" Fitzsie waved me off.

In five minutes I'd cleared everything away, and Jasper had managed to stack the hatboxes precariously back in the closet. At the door, Fitzsie all but shoved us outside. I pecked her on the cheek, her skin loose and cool. She said, "You look happy, lovey. He's good. He's a good egg." She turned to Jasper and smacked him hard on the back a few times. "Good egg," she repeated to him. "You can come back anytime, and I'll save the hat for you. You know which one," she said, winking.

We walked slowly, hand in hand, back to my apartment. "Thanks for being so great," I said.

"I had fun, really."

I threw my keys on the floor as I walked inside my apartment. "Fitzsie," I said, and shook my head, laughing. "She loved that."

Jasper shrugged. "What can I say? I have a way with the ladies."

"You're my good egg," I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.

"I'm the best egg," he corrected. "I'm _your_ best egg."

"You're my _only_ egg," I said.

"Hey!" he pouted. Oh my god, the pout was going to kill me.

"I mean," I said, "that you are the egg, my best egg, and I shall have no other eggs before you."

"And don't you forget it," he said, placated.

I thought about what had happened in Fitzsie's apartment and took a deep breath. _It feels so free, but it's so cold, it's so cold_. "Jasper," I said, meticulously sounding out each letter in his name, drawing it out as long as possible.

"Yes, O Keeper of the Best Egg?"

"I … I think I want to tell you about what happened in Fitzsie's kitchen."

Jasper nodded solemnly, waiting for me to continue.

There was no going back now, but it would be all right. I didn't want to be a ghost anymore.

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[1] Madeline L'Engle, _A Wrinkle in Time_ (New York: Dell, 1962), 179.

[2] The Paper Raincoat, "Brooklyn Blurs," _Safe in the Sound_ (2008).

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A/N: I've been dying to make a Mad Hatter Tea-Party happen since the first chapter. Finally! Next chapter will be up soonish, as it's nearly finished, but if you want a teaser, leave ye olde review. There will be backstory and angst in the next.**


	13. The Child Is Gone

**A/N: Mucho thanks for this chapter go to Becca Graymoor for giving me the idea to use the third person device to avoid Basil Exposition Syndrome. Love to the usual Rav UU and Saturday night chat ladies.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer would deny any of this ever happened.**

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**Chapter 13: The Child Is Gone**

_Take all of your sympathy and leave it outside_

_'Cause there's no kind of loving that can make this all right_

_- Fiona Apple _[1]

_Here we go_, I thought. I furrowed my brow and sat cross-legged on the couch, patting the place next to me with my hand. Jasper sat down. I swallowed hard. _Fuck, Alice, you are really going to do this? It's not too late to change your mind._

Jasper looked at me expectantly. _Quick, make up a lie_, I begged myself. But instead, words began to tumble out of me.

"This is kind of dumb," I began. "But I want to tell you about the wig. I was going to be Rapunzel, and I put the wig on, and … it was scary."

Jasper nodded, looking thoughtful. He didn't say anything.

"I used to be a blonde. I mean, I think I still am, under the dye." I grimaced. This was going to be hard. He probably thought I was just admitting I had a dye job, in case he thought I thought he had a thing for brunettes only.

"When I put the wig on at home and looked at myself, I looked so much like a girl I used to be," I continued. "I couldn't face her. I couldn't be her again." I shook my head, remembering the panic at feeling trapped in the mirror with Mary Alice Brandon staring at me from the other side.

"See, when I was in high school, some … bad things happened." How much could I tell him without bringing my mother into it? She was my most protected memory, one I knew I couldn't share with Jasper. I guarded her fiercely.

"I had this, well I thought he was my boyfriend," I explained. "It turns out I was mistaken."

Jasper's eyes narrowed, but he reached out and enveloped my hand in his own.

"I was sad and lonely, you know, typical emo adolescent bullshit," I said, cringing against my lie. I knew there was nothing _typical_ about it, and I remembered how happy and uncomplicated I'd been before my life had gone to shit. "So I let him do … stuff … to me. I mean, nothing too much, but I think I wasn't ready for it. But I told myself it didn't bother me. And I thought it didn't. I thought it didn't matter, because he cared about me."

Jasper looked at me patiently, waiting for me to continue.

I couldn't go on. I was losing my nerve.

I sighed. "I'm having trouble putting this into words."

Jasper started rubbing the back of my neck. "You don't have to tell me if it's too much right now."

"No," I said, as much as I wanted to take that easy out. "I think I know what I want to say, but when I start to say it out loud, I get overwhelmed, like my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. I need you to know, but it just … sounds so ridiculous. Embarrassing, like I'm doing something wrong. Like you'll blame me for being stupid."

"Nothing about you is stupid, Alice. I'm here. I'm listening." He continued to rub the back of my neck.

I sat in silence, trying to force the words out but getting lost along the way, _breadcrumbs lost under the snow_.

Jasper let me sit there for a while, but finally he said, "Would it help if you told me like it's a story that happened to someone else? Like, in the third person?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. I thought about it. It seemed mildly less frightening. "I'll give it a shot."

I took a deep breath and began.

***

_Once upon a time there lived a girl, who was more or less like other girls her age. She had long blonde hair that flowed to her waist, and she enjoyed acting in plays. In her senior year in high school, she got the lead in the spring musical, _Man of La Mancha_. _

I paused, looking to Jasper for confirmation. "Do you know the show?"

"Don Quixote, right? 'The Impossible Dream'?" he said gently. He whistled a little of it through his teeth. For a straight guy, he sure knew a lot about musical theater. I nodded and continued.

_She was cast as Aldonza, the serving girl and whore whom Don Quixote finds and imagines to be his ideal lady, his Dulcinea. A boy named Mitchell was cast as the head muleteer. All of the other muleteers were his friends. Soon after rehearsals began, Mitchell started spending time with the girl, reaching out where others had shunned her. When he asked her out, she was grateful. She conveniently ignored the fact that she had no feelings for him. _

_She was so lonely then, so desperate for human contact. As one of her favorite songs says, "Any kind of touch I think is better than none, even upside down." So she let him touch her in the backseat of his mother's car. She imagined it was love, or something close enough, that made him touch her, but she didn't feel much of anything: not affection on his part, and certainly not any stirrings inside when he groped her. She thought it was her problem: she was numb. _

_One night, when he had managed to get her shirt off and explore her with his hands and mouth, sloppily and not a little cruelly ("Who else is going to want to touch you this way?" he had asked when she flinched), he convinced her to let him keep her small, clean white bra, the one with a tiny blue ribbon in the center. Practically a training bra, embarrassing in its innocence. It was probably something a twelve year old would wear, but she was small, and her choices were limited. _

_At first she resisted letting him have it, wondering what kind of girl that would make her. But he insisted that that was how proper girlfriends behaved. He insinuated it was a romantic gesture, the modern-day equivalent of giving a lock of one's hair. She decided to go along with it, because if she lost Mitchell, she had nobody. She allowed him to pocket the bra but looked away when he did it, too ashamed to watch. If she didn't see it, maybe it didn't really happen. As she snuck back into the house that night, she hoped no one noticed that her nipples were visible through her thin cotton blouse. She changed into her pajamas and cried herself to sleep, doing her best to keep her sobs quiet so no one else would hear. She wasn't sure why she was crying, but she felt she'd done something wrong._

_Rehearsals for the show were the one time she felt free. Although the breaks were awful because of the punctuated, loaded silences whenever she came too close to her schoolmates, she relished the comfort and escape of becoming someone else when they were running scenes. Even if that someone else was a whore._

_She wanted so badly to have her own Don Quixote who would see her not as a pariah but as his Dulcinea. She wanted someone who would ignore the way the others treated her, someone who would believe she ought to be treasured and respected, even if it were only a madman who could see her that way. She lived for the days they rehearsed those scenes, just because it was so nice for someone to speak tender words to her, even if they were only from a script and reluctantly recited by a pimply boy._

_She was less fond of the days they'd rehearse the muleteers' scene toward the end of the show. In the story, Aldonza has been taking Quixote's words to heart and no longer wants to give herself up for a quick roll in the hay. The muleteers are angry about her change in attitude, and one day they surround her, hit her, drag her away. They beat and rape her offstage. The sad thing was, even rehearsing that scene was still better than being herself, alone in her head. At least these horrible things were happening to someone else. At least she knew she wasn't responsible for what was happening._

_Her drama teacher was a kind man, and he knew this scene was a bit heavy for a high school student to experience. He did everything he could to make her feel safe, every move choreographed, expected, predictable. Nothing happened in the scene that hadn't already been planned out. He ran each move by the girl first to make sure she was comfortable with it. "Is it okay if he grabs your arm? Your shoulder?" For a face slap, he made sure they practiced again and again until it was automatic. With her back to the audience, she'd clap her hands to sound the nap as Mitchell went to strike her face. She was touched by the teacher's concern._

I was hit with a wave of guilt, remembering Mr. Crandall gamely blocking the muleteer scene with his arm in a sling, the arm my mother had broken. How he could still treat me with such kindness after what my mother had done to him? Her attack had put him in the hospital, and he still had some bruising around his face a month later. I could barely look at him and had wanted to drop out of the show out of shame, but he insisted that I stay. He had even refused to press charges, understanding that my mother was not in her right mind, not blaming her. The kids at school had not been so forgiving. They'd made my life hell, as if things at home weren't bad enough.

I had been unable to look Jasper in the eye for some time now, choosing instead to address my story to the patch of couch visible between my knees. I started trying to sneak a glance to gauge his reaction, but I knew if I looked at him now, I'd never be able to finish. I rested my chin on folded hands and went on.

_The show opened and was well received. The girl lived for the applause, because it felt a little something like love. She tried not to notice that no one would hold her hands during the company bow. She also tried not to take it personally when Mitchell wouldn't hold her hand or even stand next to her at the opening night party. _

_On closing night, the girl was nervous but excited, the way she always was before a performance. She looked forward to the opportunity to lose herself completely, the spotlights kissing her face like benevolent gods. The energy on stage was a little weird that night, but a show changed performance to performance depending on the audience. She didn't think anything of it._

_But then._

_But then they got to the scene with the muleteers. The minute she saw Mitchell's face, she knew something was wrong. He looked different. It was as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time. She had wanted so much for him to be one of the good guys. In the bright lights of the stage, she could see his true face. How could she have fooled herself for so long? There was no affection for her in those eyes, just disgust and hatred._

_The scene had been rehearsed to death. She knew exactly what those boys were supposed to do on each beat of music. They started out following the staging as the teacher had so carefully choreographed. But then they started being rough. They yanked her hair. They grabbed her with a little too much force. They grabbed her hard enough to leave hand-shaped bruises on her arms. They grabbed her in places that were off limits—her breasts, her ass. _

_She didn't know what to do—she'd had it drilled into her head that you never stopped in performance no matter what went wrong. She thought about all the people in the audience, how they'd paid for their tickets and would be angry if there was no show. She felt obligated to give them their show. _

_So she let the boys do it. _

_She let them corner her, even as one boy—she'd never know who—snaked a hand up her skirt and pinched her hard through her panties. She bore it. She just stood there and took it when Mitchell went to do the face slap and really slapped her. She wanted to stop them but couldn't find her voice. She was trapped inside the script: it was written, and thus it had to happen. This was her fate. It was predestined. So how could she stop it? Someone else would have to do it for her. She screamed inside for the heavens to pity her, for someone in the audience to speak up. For someone offstage to realize things were out of control and intervene. But they did nothing. They just watched._

_When it became apparent that no one would save her, she accepted it. She was barely in her body when she was on stage anyway, too wrapped up in whatever character she played. So what did it matter? It was still kind of fake, just part of the story, and therefore not _really_ happening to her._

_Until._

_Mitchell reached into his sleeve and pulled out a bit of white fabric. He whipped it out of his costume so quickly that she didn't know what it was at first, but then she recognized the sweet little blue bow. Her bra. He flung it at her, and the caress of the wispy cloth against her face stung far more than his slap moments earlier._

_The bra fluttered to the floor almost in slow motion. It sat there for what seemed like ages before the other boys processed what it was. As their realization dawned, the laughter began. Were they laughing just because it was an intimate item of clothing? Were they laughing at its smallness, at the secrets it revealed about the breasts it once contained? The boys were tossing the bra around, and she made futile attempts to grab it as it flew over her head._

_The spell was broken. This was really happening to _her_, not to Aldonza. That little scrap of fabric had made it suddenly personal. And the enormity of everything that had already happened, all the things she'd been able to disavow until this moment, hit her. They were doing this to _her_, not to some character. _

_She started to bolt. She went to snatch her bra from one of the boys, with full intention to run to the parking lot, get into her car, and just drive all night. But she had scarcely taken two steps before she realized didn't have it in her to run away, either from this life or from this show. She was a coward. She was afraid of drawing more attention by running away. There was a full auditorium out there watching her, and maybe some of the audience knew what was really happening. But maybe most of them didn't. If she ran away, they'd all know. _

_She would have to persevere. She'd have to finish the show. She forced herself to float away, until she believed she was sitting in the audience, just watching a girl who had her face. _

_She was able to stay in that imaginary spot in the audience until her solo after the muleteers' scene. Aldonza's words, "I am not your lady! I am not any kind of lady!" broke something in her. With a newly-found bitterness, she sang, "I was spawned in a ditch by a mother who left me there, naked and cold and too hungry to cry / I never blamed her; I'm sure she left hoping that I'd have the good sense to die."_[2] _In this moment, she and the whore Aldonza were fused into one body._

It had been so long since that night, but I still remembered the words, even though I'd never sung the song again—not until tonight as I sat next to Jasper. Unlike when I'd sung with him over the phone, or even in my bed last night, I barely phonated, whisper-singing the words to him. Was he still listening? He wasn't making a sound. _Don't look at him; don't look at him_. _Just finish. You're nearly there. It's almost over. _I continued to study the patch of sofa as I spoke.

_She made it to the end of the show, so her secret was safe. Only the boys knew what they had done to her. Before her last entrance, she saw a few of the boys backstage high-five Mitchell, hand him money. She felt a nauseating clamminess envelop her as she realized that this whole _thing_ had been a bet. They'd planned this. They must have planned this from the beginning. Mitchell had been paid to humiliate her. It wasn't enough, the backseat sessions. It wasn't enough to humiliate her in front of his friends. He'd done in front of the entire student body, parents, relatives, faculty. She felt like a fool for having been so gullible. Somehow this was her fault as well, for not seeing through his act. He wasn't such a good actor, after all. She suspected she just had seen what she wanted to see._

_As soon as the curtain closed, she ran to the car, not bothering to change out of her costume or wash off her makeup. She'd return the costume later. She couldn't face anyone. She drove to her house, ran up to her room. She knew what she needed to do. She hacked off her hair, nearly to her scalp. With each blonde hank she chopped away, she felt herself disappear. She'd always thought it was a cliché to go Felicity until she was faced with not wanting to be in her skin anymore. By the time the last hank fell, she felt like a ghost._

I rubbed the back of my head, remembering the feeling of the cold steel of my mother's heavy sewing scissors against my scalp, the satisfying sound of the blade against my hair.

_She considered burning the hair, cremating her old self, but she knew the stench would be too much. She ended up just throwing the hair into the trash, an unceremonial end to her unceremonial life. _

I should have known that it wouldn't be that easy to disappear. I couldn't tell Jasper that some parents had complained right after the show about what they considered to be overly racy staging. Mr. Crandall had been threatened with suspension. He was confused—he'd been lying on a cot in the infirmary during the performance, suddenly lightheaded from the painkillers he was still taking after my mother's attack. The angry parents showed him video from their camcorders, and that's when the police were called.

I was hauled into the office with my grandmother, and I denied anything had happened. I said I was fine and insisted no charges needed to be filed. I knew I'd never survive having to testify, and the only thing more humiliating than what had already happened would be to have to retell it in front of complete strangers and then not be believed, to be torn apart by those boys' parents' expensive attorneys. And as much as I would have wanted to see those boys punished, things were hard enough at school without my being responsible for getting half the drama club arrested. It didn't matter, though, because the principal still suspended Mitchell and his friends. Even though I had begged the teachers and authorities not to do anything, the students blamed me for their absence. They assumed I'd snitched. But I couldn't explain any of this to Jasper without explaining why they all hated me so much to begin with.

_When she went back to school, they called her new names, like "whore" and "dyke" and "freak." She'd cut her hair too short. It drew too much attention. She couldn't even disappear properly._

_She graduated, let her hair grow out just enough so it would let her fade into a crowd, and she dyed her hair jet black before leaving for college. She didn't want anyone to recognize her again. The girl she was died that day in that crowded auditorium, and she has been a ghost ever since._

My voice cracked a little as I finished my thoroughly fucked up fairy tale, and I realized I'd been speaking for a long, long while. More than I'd probably ever said to Jasper before. This wasn't the _little bit_ I had wanted to show him. Why had I told him everything? He was going to run for it. I braced myself. "Jasper?" I asked. Might as well not delay the inevitable.

He didn't say anything. Oh. This was how it was going to be. I nodded and scooted away from him, feeling as if my heart were being torn in two.

"Alice," he said finally. His eyes were wet. Was he crying? "Thank you so much for trusting me enough to tell me all that. It never should have happened," he said softly. "I wish I could take it all away. I wish I could build a time machine and go back there and beat the crap out of everyone. You didn't do anything to deserve that. I … you're a miracle, Alice."

"A miracle?" I scoffed. "I'm a big fucking mess, is what I am."

"Can't you see it?" Jasper said. "That all of … _that_ could have happened to you, and that you still gave me a chance, that you are so kind to Fitzsie, that you are still open to letting anyone new into your life—that's what makes you a miracle."

I nodded, hearing his words but not really believing them. In a small voice I said, "So, I'm not too broken for you?"

"Broken? Alice, you are strong. You survived. How could you be broken?" He wrapped his arms around, cradling me. His simple, caring gesture melted the barriers in the memory, no longer distant and in the third person, but overwhelming and present. I leaned against his chest and let him rock me as I wept, mourning for the girl I buried, but for the first time imagining that maybe it wasn't all her fault.

By the time I was too tired to cry anymore, Jasper's shirt was soaked. I felt light. "So, that was a pretty handy technique you used there, to tell it like a story. Where'd you learn that? Shrink school?"

"Nah," Jasper said. "_Chess_. 'Someone Else's Story.'"

"Figures," I said, lightly shoving him. "Swedes."

"Yeah. And Tim Rice."

"Jasper?"

"Yes, baby?"

"You know too much about musical theater."

"Yeah."

"Jasper?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm falling for you hard."

"Me too, baby, me too."

"Good." I leaned against his damp shirt and let him rock me to sleep.

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[1] Fiona Apple, "The Child Is Gone," _Tidal_, 1996.

[2] Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh, "Aldonza," _Man of La Mancha_ (1965).

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**A/N: And I'm spent. God, this chapter took a lot out of me. So, there's most of Alice's backstory. I'm kind of terrified that y'all will hate me after reading this, so I'm going to lie down for a while to curb the nausea. Reviews will get a teaser as soon as I have one written. **


	14. It Just Takes Some Getting Used To

**A/N: You guys are awesome. I was ready to vomit, but your comments kept the nausea at bay. I guess I was afraid I'd get a lot of "So? This is the backstory we've been waiting for? This is why Alice is such a mess?" And I guess that's sort of the point I am trying to make, that there can be trauma in the ordinary. But thank you, again, for sticking with me and this story. And once again, Grace, you rock my socks. Thank you for another thud-inducing review and for alerting me to the rec for this story (along with the other In the Days of Auld Lang Syne stories) on the Lazy Yet Discerning Ficster. Ack. (_Holy crap, did that just happen?_) I think I can die now.**

**The usual love to Rav UUs and my Saturday night chat ladies.**

**If you want another Alice/Jasper fic, check out shalu's Down the Rabbit Hole in my favorites. She deserves some love. Clementines and e.e. jasper: life is complete.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer is the secret, is the moment, when everything happens. Meyer ... let's make Meyer! 3-2-1 Meyer!  
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****Chapter 14: It Just Takes Some Getting Used To**

_Winter breaks me at her start every time_

_Even though I'm prepared for the cold_

_In a while I'll be doing fine, I'm told_

_- The Paper Raincoat [1]_

I woke up confused, sticky, and starving. What time was it? Where was I? Why did I feel so crusty? With a start, I realized I'd fallen asleep on the couch with Jasper. In my sleep haze I struggled to think of the last thing I could remember.

Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no, what had I done? Why did I tell him _everything_? Or, very nearly everything? I'd never said any of that out loud before. Certainly I had relived it in my head again and again, flashes of it reaching through my subconscious and jolting me out of moments of peace, but I'd never told anyone. Obviously. At the time, it seemed like a good idea—I'd been feeling so guilty about misleading him when he'd been so forthcoming and wonderful and supportive and patient. It had just seemed wrong not to give him anything back. And it was hard to keep up the lies.

I didn't think I'd meant to tell him all of it, and I no longer was sure why it had been so important that he knew about the high school me. But it had all spilled out of me like soda out of a shaken bottle. There was something about Jasper that made it hard for me to keep secrets. When I told him what had happened to me, I felt something like relief, an unburdening. But away from the moment, I mostly felt shame, embarrassment. I was worried that he saw me as a child, or a victim, or worse yet, a child who deceived people into believing she was a victim. Because what had happened to me that was so horrible? Didn't I refuse to press charges because part of me didn't believe I had any right to, when I knew far worse things happened to women every day? What right had I to claim any part of their sympathy?

The room was dim; only a table lamp was on. What day was it? Shit, Saturday—and I had to go to work. Had I slept through? I reached for Jasper's wrist and waited for my eyes to focus. Half past seven. Okay, I wasn't officially late yet, but I had to get going. I tried to find my shoes and tripped over Jasper's feet. Which, of course, woke Jasper up.

"Baby? What's going on?"

"I shouldn't have fallen asleep! I'm going to be late, and Rose is going to kill me." I scrambled around, buckling my Mary Janes back up. I was having trouble making eye contact with Jasper. I looked everywhere in the room but at his face. Maybe if I acted super frazzled and fluttery, he wouldn't notice.

"Alice, are you all right?"

"Of course I am—why wouldn't I be?" I tried to laugh off while I struggled to find my phone.

Jasper caught my hand. "Darlin', you are acting like a cracked-out hummingbird."

"What?" His comment shocked me into stillness.

"Are you feeling bad about telling me?"

"Bad? About telling you what?" _Alice, that was utterly pathetic_.

Jasper gently tugged on my hand, pulling me next to him on the couch. "You told me some big, heavy stuff. Painful, awful stuff. And it would be a perfectly normal reaction if you're feeling strange about it now, maybe regretting it. But let me tell you, _I_ don't regret it. I am honored that you trusted me enough to tell me. I'm proud of you. And you shouldn't feel ashamed."

I felt like I was teetering on the edge of something important. The easy thing to do would be to tell him he was wrong, that I didn't feel any of those things, that it was no big deal, shrug it off. And then dance around my feelings of awkwardness, not make eye contact, joke it away. Every cell in my body was screaming to do this. _Pretend it never happened, pretend it never happened, you never told him anything, that wasn't you, it didn't happen, you were dreaming, he doesn't know, you didn't tell him. Nothing's changed. He won't look at you with pity or disgust. _

Or I could look at it square in the face. Accept that he knew. That I had told him. That it all happened. And move on. (Move on? Did I even know how to do that?) Was this how adults behaved?

He was looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I was weighing my options. I'd try one and then the other in my head, but it was hard to make any progress with my heart racing and my mind screaming, _He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows_.

If I could have pulled out my hair and somehow unraveled myself, I would have done it.

"Alice?"

_He fucking knows. _

"Baby? You're scaring me a little."

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to quiet my fluttering heart enough to figure out what I wanted to do. What _I_ wanted to do, not the frightened animal inside. _He wants to help you_, I tried to reason. _Just talk to him_. The animal inside crouched down, ready to bolt, ready to bite and scratch to get away.

"What's going on in there?" he murmured, brushing his fingers against my cheek.

My eyes flew open. "Don't _look_ at me like that," I was surprised to hear myself snap. It was like I had no control over my mouth. I felt like I'd been locked inside my head and was watching Jasper through the windows of my eyes.

"How … how am I looking at you?" Jasper seemed confused, hurt. I thought he'd look away from me, but his eyes stayed focused on my face.

"Like you fucking pity me. Like you think you know exactly what I'm all about." I felt as paralyzed as I did the night the dark almost took me. _Jasper, I didn't mean it_, I tried to say through my eyes. _Can you hear me?_

"I don't pity you. I ache for you. I wish I could feel your pain for you, if it meant you could feel less."

He was saying all the right things. It should have been enough. It would have been enough, if I had been any sort of normal. But I wasn't. So it wasn't.

"Words, words, words, just pretty words," I said, standing up again and grabbing my coat, keys, and purse. "Do you think they'll fix me?"

I stormed out of the apartment and ran to catch the bus. I heard Jasper scramble to follow me. What the fuck was I doing? _Stop it! Talk to him!_ I commanded myself. No good. My body kept running until it reached the bus stop.

I paced inside the same panel of sidewalk, three steps one way, three steps back. Staying within the perimeter of the little rectangle was both constricting and comforting. I could feel Jasper standing near. Suddenly the wind shifted, and I could smell him. For an instant, my body remembered the feel of his body nestled against it in my bed, and the moment was enough to make the barrier in my mind shimmer and weaken. I gritted my teeth and pushed through the barrier in my head. I gasped, "Jasper!" and reached tiny hands out to clutch at his shirt, still damp from my tears.

His eyes searched my face. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I said, dropping my gaze. "I … I don't know what happened."

"Ain't no thing, peanut," he said, gently pulling my hands off his shirt and bringing my hands up to his mouth. He rubbed my fingertips back and forth across his lower lip. "Are you all right?"

I laughed humorlessly. "It's all relative, right?" I couldn't stop shivering, even though I wasn't cold. "Listen, I didn't mean what I said back there."

Jasper nodded.

I traced a small circle with my foot. "The truth is, I don't really know how to act around you right now. Actually, I would really like to dig a hole and hide inside it."

"But why? You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"You can say that as many times as you want. It won't make me believe it," I said, shaking my head and scrunching up my face. "I don't even know what I've done to make me ashamed. I just have this overwhelming feeling that I've done something wrong. That I've done _everything_ wrong. And I feel like I did something wrong by telling you. Part of me wishes I'd never told you. Part of me is furious, like you tricked me into telling you." I really couldn't look at him.

"I'm sorry, Alice. I was just trying to make you comfortable, but I hope you didn't feel pressured somehow."

I buried my face in his shirt. "No. It's just easier to blame you. I know it's not your fault. But I can't control this urge to hide. I don't want you to look at me. I want to disappear inside myself." Fuck. I wasn't making any sense.

Squeaky brakes announced the arrival of the bus. I pried myself from Jasper's shirt. "I need to go to work," I sighed. I hated to leave things like this.

My edges felt jagged, like I would cut him if he touched me.

"Can I come with you?" asked Jasper.

I nodded, turning and climbing up the steep stairs. After paying my fare, I walked to the very back, slumping into a seat and staring out of the smudged window. I felt Jasper sit next to me. Cautiously he took my hand in his. I didn't pull away.

We sat in silence until I couldn't stand it anymore. "Hi," I finally said.

"Hi."

"Are you mad at me?" I asked in a small voice. I flinched when I heard him draw in a breath.

"Mad? Oh, Alice, I'm just worried about you."

"I just don't understand why I'm such a mess."

"You never told anyone else that stuff, did you?"

I shook my head, ashamed.

"Well, it's pretty natural that you might be reliving it, feeling all the emotions you had back then. If we bottle up memories, they stay potent."

_Potent_. That was an understatement.

"Do you mind if I just, you know, if we just _are_ for tonight? I … my brain is tired." I collapsed against his side.

Jasper wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. "Of course. Alice, you don't have to be anything around me except yourself. Or not even that, if you want to be someone else."

Why did he always know the right thing to say? It was unnerving. Comforting, but unnerving at the same time. I nodded once, biting my lip. I settled against him for the rest of the ride, his body diffusing the bumps and shocks as the bus trundled over potholes and joins in the road.

When we got to the Unicorn, I silently led him off the bus, my hand clasped in his. We stopped for a moment outside. Jasper cleared his throat. "Do you want to be alone?"

I didn't know what to tell him. I shrugged.

He nodded and turned to leave. As he took a step or two away, I thought about the evening ahead of me and tried to imagine it without him. _Unbearable_.

"Wait!" I called after him.

He turned immediately.

"Don't go," I begged, reaching for him.

"I won't. If that's what you want. Oh, and I don't mean to sound like an asshole," he added, "but do you think you'll want me to come over again tonight? After work?"

I looked around, embarrassed and hoping no one was within earshot. "Yeah," I mumbled. "If that's okay with you."

"All right," he nodded. "But I'm going to need to go home and change."

Now I was the asshole for not thinking about these things. Had I even offered him a towel? _What kind of hoopy frood am I?_[2] I wondered.

"Of course," I said. "I'm sorry; I wasn't thinking."

"Please," he said, waving off my apology, "I don't expect you to be the HoJo or anything. Plus, you fed me cake. And cookies."

"That was a long time ago," I pointed out.

"Still. The deliciousness is remembered long after the sugar has been converted into energy."

I knew we were okay when we fell into our typical trivial conversation. This lightness felt earned. It wasn't an avoidance tactic now. I ran to him and squeezed him as hard as I could. "Don't be long," I said.

"Two shakes of a lamb's tail," he said, picking me up in another signature bear hug before leaving me.

I strode past the bar, avoiding Rosalie and heading straight for the women's room. I'd run out of my apartment in such a hurry that I hadn't taken in the damage from my embarrassing crying jag. My eyes were puffy and definitely crusty. I splashed some cold water on my face, dabbing myself dry with the rough paper towels. _Definitely not a hoopy frood who knows where her towel is_. I dug in my purse for concealer and did my best to hide the damage.

About two hours into my shift, I was starving. The cookies and tea at Mrs. Fitzsimmons' seemed like a lifetime ago. When I thought about all that had transpired since her tea, it felt even longer. Who was I now? Did I still feel like a ghost? I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to picture myself. Black hair, blonde hair, Alice Prynne, Mary Alice Brandon. Like a Tarot card: me, and me reversed. But which one was right? _What is the meaning of my card?_

The best answer I had for now was: the me when I was with Jasper.

Even with my eyes still closed, I knew Jasper had returned. I felt a smile curl the edges of my mouth, and my hands moved to get him a Dr Pepper. _Huh, not boozing tonight_, I thought, as I saw the soda label in my head.

"Damn, I was trying to trick you this time," he said, as he eyed the soda.

"Amateur," I teased.

"Wait, I have something for you," he said, handing me a paper bag.

Puzzled, I reached for the bag. I peered into it. Oh. Oh my.

"Pad thai," he said. "I thought you might be hungry."

I groaned in anticipation. "I was _this close_ to gnawing off my own arm. Or drinking a whole bottle of Bloody Mary mix. Either way, it would have been a bad dietary choice."

"I don't know," Jasper said, taking a long pull of Dr Pepper. "I'm pretty sure the Bloody Mary mix would have been considered a vegetable in the Reagan years."

"I think my arm is a protein," I said, ducking under the bar with the bag. "I'm sorry to be rude, but this pad thai needs to be injected into my belly now."

I hurried into the break room and opened the takeout container, shoveling plastic forkfuls into my mouth without bothering to sit down. I gave myself five minutes to gorge, since I wasn't technically due for a break. Even the five minutes of speed-feeding quieted my complaining stomach.

"You're a lifesaver," I said to Jasper when I had returned. "I would have wilted like a Victorian anemic."

"Does this mean I get to see your ankles now?"

"No. Yes. Maybe. I mean, what kind of Victorian do you take me for?"

I was dragging my feet by the end of my shift. This day had taken a lot out of me, and if I'd been in my right mind when I stormed out of my apartment, I would have chosen different shoes. Of course, if I'd been in my right mind, I never would have stormed out of my apartment. By the time I met Jasper outside the pub after closing, my feet were throbbing.

"How cold do you think the sidewalk in Seattle in January is?" I asked.

"That's kind of an odd question," he said.

"I'm trying to figure out what would hurt more: walking home in these shoes or going barefoot home."

Without a word, Jasper hoisted me onto his back.

"The fuck?" I sputtered. "I can't let you carry me home."

"I am your Sherpa," he said, shuffling merrily along. "Honestly, I've worn coats heavier than you."

"You feed me, you carry me home—pretty soon you'll be dressing me and pre-chewing my food, won't you?" I said, rolling my eyes at my ineptitude.

"Do you mean I'd get all the flavor and none of the calories? Sign me up!"

"You are a goofball," I said. "But you are my goofball. My best egg goofball." I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his damp hair. He'd showered while he was home, and he smelled like Jasper and mint shampoo.

Jasper wasn't even breathing hard by the time we got back to the Convent. "I can handle this part," I said, hopping off his back and starting up the stairs.

I was yawning even before I got the front door open. "I'm beat," I said, unbuckling my shoes. "Can we just go to bed?"

"I have to head out early tomorrow anyway," he said vaguely. "School. Work. Schoolwork." I nodded, too tired to process.

With heavy limbs, I brushed my teeth and changed into the decidedly unsexy flannel. Jasper was waiting under the covers when I returned. I flipped off the lights and crawled into his arms, falling almost instantly asleep. "You can see my ankles if you want," I mumbled before I slipped completely under.

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[1] The Paper Raincoat, "Motion Sickness," _Safe in the Sound_ (2008). Seriously, check these guys out. I love them so very much.

[2] I added this footnote since I had a few inquiries about this reference. See: Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ (New York: Harmony Books, 1980), Chapter 3.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "_Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is_." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

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**A/N: Reviews are like surprise pad thai and piggyback rides from Sherpa Jasper. And I'll send you a teaser as soon as I start writing the next chapter. **


	15. Fusion

**A/N: So here we are again. Thanks as ever to the awesome-sauciness that are the Ravelry UU ladies, and my special Saturday night chat folks. And thanks to the new readers, whoever you are. Where did you come from? Little Lamb, who made thee?**

**Oh, and a plug for dryler's *Ethan Church*--it's in my faves. This is her new fic, and it promises to be EPIC. Her *Bright Like the Sun* also makes me ooey gooey inside.  
**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer would sue Chuck Norris if he passed off this work as his own.  
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**Chapter 15: Fusion**

_Howl: I feel terrible, like there's a weight on my chest._

_Young Sophie: A heart's a heavy burden._

_-_ _Hayao Miyazaki and Diana Wynne Jones [1]_

"Mary Alice! You're here!" My mother jumped off the bed and shuffled toward me unsteadily. I spread my arms wide and hugged her as tightly as I dared. I felt like a little girl again, until I leaned my head into her shoulder and tried to take in her smell. No, it wasn't right. Not vanilla. Antiseptic. And the chlorine smell that had seeped onto her skin from the overly bleached hospital sheets. I could almost fool myself into believing we'd just come back from a long day at the pool, but the sharp smell of disinfectant and the droning of the florescent lights overhead shattered any childish illusions. My heart, which had briefly stirred in my chest when she called my name, once again fell. I was furious with myself for believing even for a second that she had somehow been cured. It was just so hard not to hope for miracles, even if I should have known better by now.

I still had these fleeting fantasies that my mother would wake as if from a deep sleep. I could picture us gathering up her meager, staff-approved belongings in a cardboard box, walking out into the fresh air, getting into the LeBaron, and beginning our new lives. "What happened?" she'd ask, and I'd say, "I lost you, but then I found you again." And I'd drive and drive and drive, going anywhere she wanted to go.

Maybe we'd live the rest of our lives out on the road, hair blowing in the breeze, dressed like Hollywood starlets from the fifties. I could see us driving down Highway 1 along California's coast, the waves crashing below. It would be sunny every day. We'd walk along seashores with our shoes dangling from our fingertips, our bare feet leaving pale indentations in the wet, firmly packed sand. We'd eat hot dogs from carts, our wallets still clutched under our arms, purses gaping open like shocked bystanders.

And then I'd remember that this could never happen. I'd remember that we'd never escape this constant veil of gray and rain. I'd remember that I'd tried once already to bring her home, naively thinking that I could look after her. That too many times I'd woken with a start in the dead of night to find her bed empty, the front door wide open, my mother wandering the streets in her nightgown.

"I made you something," my mother said, pulling me from my thoughts. She patted the place beside her on the mattress, and I sat down, curious. Reaching under the bed, she presented me with a sheet of construction paper, still damp and floppy and smelling strongly of Elmer's Glue. The smell brought me back to elementary school and running from the school bus up the front steps with my newest creation still drying in my hand. I thought how odd it was that it had taken just a few short years for our roles to be reversed.

I reverently took the paper from her. I could feel her eyes on my face, searching for approval. I wasn't sure what I'd see, and I prayed my face would hold its impassive mask. I smiled tightly and glanced at the paper. Another collage. They didn't allow even children's safety scissors without individual supervision, so the scraps of magazine she'd used had ragged, torn edges. Despite everything, my mother still had quite an eye for color and composition, and she'd made an impressive blobby pink mosaic out of ripped up pictures of roses, shoes, lipstick, Pepto-Bismol, Playtex. In the center of the sea of pink was one tiny word: _you_.

What did it mean?

"I love it," I said, wishing it made sense to me. When I thought that she'd taken the time to make this, made it with me in mind, my chest felt tight, but I managed to smile at her. She beamed. For a few seconds, we sat in silence, smiling at each other.

Suddenly her eyes shifted focus, and she grabbed my arm.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"What?" I asked, whipping my head around to see if there was someone watching us through the window in the door.

"Your light is different," she said, squinting at me.

"What do you mean?" I asked, wondering if I should engage her when she talked strangely. Did it make it worse? All these years, and I still didn't know how best to handle her.

"You were sort of a murky blue, and now you're the prettiest yellow, like dandelions. Like sunlight dancing on the water."

I stared at my hands, turning them over slowly, trying to see what she saw. "Am I?"

She reached cautious fingers into the space around my head. "It's beautiful."

"Thanks," I said, watching the wonder light up her face. She was the beautiful one.

"He must be special," she said, resting her head against my shoulder.

I knew these moments of semi-lucidity were rare, so I just went with it. "Yeah. He really kind of is."

"Can he see your light?"

"I … I think so," I said, remembering what he'd said in the diner.

"What's his name?"

"Jasper," I said like a prayer, like a tiny little piece of holiness.

"Treasurer," she said. "Are you his treasure?"

***

I'd woken up Sunday morning because a feeling of emptiness overwhelmed me. My bed was narrow, and with Jasper in it, the whole thing transformed into a Jasper-pedic. He managed to be in all places at once, and I had slept soundly, enveloped in his embrace. My sleep number was Jasper. But now I was alone. His absence had changed the terrain of my bed to a lonely prairie.

I slid my hand along the sheets. Still warm. He couldn't have gotten up terribly long ago.

Just then, my bedroom door swung open, and Jasper crept into the room fully dressed but in bare feet. He moved quietly but with purpose, packing up his messenger bag, picking up his socks. I watched him, wondering if he'd notice me. As if hearing my thoughts, he turned. When he met my eyes, his body changed.

"Hey, sleepyhead," he said, smiling.

"Why are you up so early? It's Sunday."

He perched on the edge of the bed. My body rolled a little toward him and the dent his weight made. Hunching over, he pulled on his socks and said, "I have a ton of student grading to do."

"Do you need a ride anywhere?" I asked, propping myself up on an elbow. "I can be ready in five minutes."

"No, no," he said, kissing me on the top of my head. "You should enjoy the morning. You working tonight?"

"Always," I said, flopping onto my stomach. If he didn't need a ride, I'd try to sleep some more. I was still exhausted from yesterday.

"Are you going to be okay by yourself?" he asked, gently rubbing my back.

I shrugged underneath the blanket. Why shouldn't I be?

"Well, call me if you need anything." He sat for a while and rubbed my back until I'd nearly drifted off again.

I tried to sleep, but alone, my thoughts were erratic, full of anxiety. I hadn't realized Jasper was my worry stone. Without him nearby, I kept getting little flashes of memory from senior year, the boys. Images of their jeering faces danced behind my eyelids, prickling into me. I sat up, my heart racing. I beat my fists into the mattress, sending up clouds of dust.

It was so hard. I thought the memory had scabbed over, dulled. But there it was, still fresh and raw.

No. I was older now. _You're not that girl anymore, Alice_, I thought. _Time to grow up_.

How did anyone grow up?

What was the secret? How did people just … go on living? Every day I looked around and saw _completely normal people_. I didn't see pain etching their faces like cracks on the sidewalk. Was everyone else just better at hiding it? Or did they find a way to deal with their crap and move on?

I was disappointed that I hadn't woken up somehow transformed. I realized then that a tiny part of me had always hoped that if I ever trusted someone enough to tell the truth, that just saying the words out loud would cure me. I'd speak of the past, and the poison would be magically sucked out of my body like venom from a snakebite. I should have known that nothing was ever that easy. I certainly didn't expect to feel _worse_, but here I was, feeling raw and queasy.

_Was the truth worth it?_

I flung myself backwards and stared at the ceiling for a while, drumming my fingers against the mattress. I just couldn't stay still. In my agitation, one quiet thought, one moment of clarity came to me: _He understands a part of you._

Jasper understood now a little bit of where I came from, the raw stuff from which I was made. And he was still here. He'd accepted me, even mourned with me. _I wish you'd known me then_, I thought. I wish he'd have known me before I was completely messed up. I tried to imagine Mary Alice and Jasper together. He would have liked her; she was fun. She was open and trusting and loving. He would have liked her more than he liked me, probably. Jasper never would have had to chase after Mary Alice because she was having a meltdown. She was uncomplicated.

I found myself being jealous of her, of a dead person. Of a dead person who was _me_.

And then that quiet, calm voice came back: _He understands a part of you_.

He knew me now. And when I closed my eyes again, I could see Mary Alice being watched by Jasper. He watched like an ambivalent god while the awful things happened, unable to help because these things had to happen; they were fated. They had already happened, and their echoes would continue to cycle through, unchanging, again and again until the end of time.

But as soon as he could, he was there, picking her off the floor, putting his hands on her shoulders, and telling her she was worth something. He smoothed out her hair and held her close. In that minute, I could feel her ghost flutter over me, and with his embrace, part of her fused to me. I felt a sudden weight in my heart, but it was a welcome one, even with its accompanying pain. The pain let me know I was alive.

My eyes snapped open again, and I struggled to sit up with this new pain. This new, old pain.

With heavy steps I walked to my mirror and looked into my eyes, trying to see if I could see Mary Alice. Was she in there? Did I just imagine this heaviness in my heart?

_Of course I'm here, silly. I've always been here._

_Oh_, I thought back to her—me—fuck, I sounded crazy. _Do you think we could try being friends?_ I asked.

_Are you sure?_ She sounded surprised.

_You're a part of me_, I thought. _I don't want to lose who I am_.

_We could try it_. I could feel her stretch out, cramped from being locked up for so long. My heart beat painfully, and my breathing was ragged.

I hoped I was doing the right thing.

***

"Excuse me, but do you think we could go outside for a moment?" I flagged the orderly when he came in to check on my mother. He glanced at his watch but nodded. I put my mother's collage on the desk.

I knelt at her feet and helped her with her shoes. While I tied her shoelaces, I could remember the feel of her hands on mine, guiding me when I was learning how to tie my own. Patience never wavering, she'd tell me once again about the bunny who ran around the tree and jumped into the hole. I'd cried many fat tears out of frustration that my fingers would not obey what seemed so clear in my brain. She'd say that I'd figure it out in my own time when I was ready. And then one day I could do it myself, slowly, my tongue sticking out of my mouth in concentration.

I looked up to see my mother blankly staring at the wall behind my head. "Come on, Mom, let's get your sweater on," I said as I stood up, trying to shrug off the memory. She obediently held her arms out as I slipped the cardigan on. I helped her to her feet, and we walked silently behind the orderly as he unlocked the door to the small courtyard.

The courtyard wasn't much, a patch of poured concrete surrounded on all sides by the hospital, but there was a wooden picnic table, and if you sat on it and lay back, you could see a patch of sky. My mother and I slowly lowered ourselves onto the table with our feet resting on the bench. It was a rare clear night, and the stars burned brightly in the velvety dome over our heads.

"You can see Orion," I said, pointing to the three stars that made up his belt.

"Your light is brighter," she said. "My little star, shining so bright, I knew you before you were born."

"That's pretty." My heart felt like a stone in my chest with old, familiar guilt.

"I knew your light before I knew your face," she half sang. She pointed. "You were up there, and I brought you down to me."

***

Jasper was gone all Sunday, and I didn't see him until late into my shift at the pub. I didn't want to seem clingy, but I'd really missed him. I'd spent the day wandering the city with my strange heaviness, feeling like the wolf whose stomach had been filled with stones by the mother goat while he slept.

Without knowing it, I'd found myself at the Wooly Mammoth, my favorite yarn shop. I spent an inordinately long time walking up and down the aisles, closing my eyes and letting my fingers skim across the skeins in the cubbies. Occasionally I'd feel a tug as if my hand were a dowsing rod, and I'd put the skein into my basket without even looking at what it was. It was an expensive way to soothe myself, and I had no idea what I'd be making. I thought maybe I was searching for insulation for my newly raw edges.

By the time Jasper ducked into the pub close to midnight, I was drained. I hadn't counted on how much harder it would be going through the day carrying Mary Alice inside. I was struck this evening wondering if it were something wicked I did, serving drinks, aiding in addictions. It might have just been the Sunday night crowd, made up of more older customers, barflies, sad, rheumy-eyed men staring into their drinks like the eyes of a lost love. The college crowd didn't bring me down like this.

"Hey, sweet thing," Jasper said, hopping onto his favorite stool.

"Hey," I said, sliding a glass over to him.

"It's empty," he said, puzzled.

"Is it?" I looked in surprise. "I'm sorry, I …" I lost my train of thought and stared at Jasper helplessly.

"Did I trip you up?" He smiled kindly.

"I just feel strange," I said, closing my eyes. "I'm not quite myself."

"Aw, baby, it's all right. You're not a trained monkey."

I smiled wickedly. "I'm not _trained _at all." Just being in the presence of Jasper, my worry stone, had already relaxed me, and I could see him again in my mind's eye. "Corsendonk brown," I said, reaching under the bar.

"There it is," he said, beaming at me.

***

The orderly, who had been leaning against the brick wall at a polite distance, cleared his throat. "Visitor's hours are almost up."

"All right, thank you," I said, sitting up. "Come on, Mom."

I slipped my hand into hers and pulled her up. The orderly unlocked the door and waited for us to go through, jingling his keys. My mother stiffened as we stepped onto the linoleum floors, back under the harsh florescent lights.

"Why … why am I here?" she asked in a small, frightened voice.

We'd had this conversation many times, but it never got easier for me.

"This is a safe place," I said, my oft-repeated line sounding hollow and insincere.

The orderly pretended not to hear us as he unlocked her bedroom door.

"Are you going to leave me?" she asked, clutching my arm. I eased her onto the bed, kneeling again to take her shoes off. I took her sweater off and hung it in the closet.

"I have to go for a little while, but I'm always thinking of you."

"I don't understand," she whimpered. "Why can't I go home with you? What did I do wrong?"

"Oh, Mom," I said, my eyes brimming over. "It's not you. Nothing's wrong with you. It's me; I'm too weak." _And stupid, and incompetent_, I added. I sat by her feet and laid my head on her lap. "I just … I can't take care of you by myself, not the way that you need. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Mommy."

I buried my head in her skirts and cried hot, silent tears.

After a while I realized my mom was stroking my hair and humming tunelessly. "Don't cry, Mary Alice," she said at last. "We can't have your light fade."

I looked up slowly at her. Once again she spread her fingers out and reached into the air around my head. She smiled beatifically. "So pretty," she said.

I remembered that the orderly was at the door. Embarrassed, I stood up, wiping my cheeks roughly with the palm of my hand. I brushed the grit from the floor off my knees. Picking up the collage off the desk, I sat down next to my mom on the bed again. I laid the collage across my lap.

We sat, our heads bowed, looking at the sea of pink, the tiny "you."

She pointed the little scrap of off-white paper with the twelve-point serif text, a tiny black feather floating on a pink cloud. Her nails were clipped short by the staff, and I stared at the pale half moon at her nail bed.

"That's you," she said, tapping the square bit of text for emphasis. Pointing to the pink background, she said, "And that's me."

Like watching a stereogram shift into 3-D relief, suddenly I realized the pink shape that I'd previously seen as only a blob was actually rather like a large heart. And there I was, wrapped inside.

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[1] Hayao Miyazaki (screenplay) and Diana Wynne Jones (novel), _Howl's Moving Castle_, 2004.

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**A/N: Sorry there wasn't a lot of Jasper in this chapter, but good things come to those who wait. Or so I'm told.** **But seriously, where did you new kids come from? Drop me a line and introduce yourselves if you like, and I'll send you a teaser for the next chapter. Feisty out!  
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	16. Alive Below the Waste

**A/N: Well, here we are again. Love to my Ravelry peeps and the rest of the ItDoALS team. You might want to check out the Emmett and Edward POVs for this story (written by Grendelsmother and JayneRulis, respectively, and listed in my favorites) because some elements/dynamics come into play.**

**ALSO, I have a new story up, "Sleepers, Awake (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme)." Summary: Bella, compulsive sketcher of wolves, has not dreamed in years. Unexpectedly, she begins to dream again the night tragedy takes away her first and greatest love. ExB, sort of.**

**Please check it out!**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer hates my ass face.**

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Chapter 16: Alive Below the Waste**

_line me up in single file_

_with all your grievances_

_stare but I can taste_

_you're still alive below the waste_

_ripples come and ripples go_

_and ripple back to me_

_- Tori Amos _[1]

I sat outside the house in the Fitzsiemobile, my hands shaking on the wheel. I'd already cut the engine, and now I was trying to muster up the courage to open the door and do this. I glanced over to the passenger seat where the pineapple and lemon Jell-o salad sat, its jiggling seeming to mock my jittery hands. I'd been sitting in the car long enough for the cold to begin to creep in, but my heart was beating so quickly that blood still pumped all through me, keeping me warm.

I heard the front door slam, and I looked up to see Jasper walking to the car barefoot. He smiled, opened the passenger side door, and slid in, setting the Jell-o mold on his lap. "You okay? You've been sitting here for a while."

"You noticed that?"

"Maybe."

"How long have you been watching me?" I asked, staring straight ahead as if I were still driving.

"I _may_ have been looking out the window, waiting for you to come."

"I see." I was still sitting in the driver's seat with my hands on the steering wheel.

"So are you going to come inside?"

"Maybe."

"Alice." Jasper snaked an arm around me, still balancing the Jell-o on his lap. "The guys can't wait to meet you. You can do this."

"I can do this," I repeated hollowly.

Mary Alice nudged me from inside. _You __**can**__ do this, because I'm here with you. And I know __**I**__ can do this_. I nodded.

"Okay, let's go," I said, shaking my hands out to stop the feeling of ants crawling under my skin.

Jasper kissed me on the temple. "You're going to be fantastic."

I had my doubts, but I opened the door and stepped out into the cold.

***

A few days ago, we'd been lying in my bed in the dark, Jasper tracing patterns on my arms. We'd gotten into a routine where we'd climb into my bed silently, lights off. Jasper was afraid to touch me, I thought. He was exceptionally cautious. On the one hand I was relieved, but at the same time I was resentful. Who was I angry with? It was hard to say. As much as I knew Jasper was only trying to protect me, I didn't like feeling unwanted. I thought he didn't want to touch me because he saw me as a child, immature and unready. He wasn't attracted to me because I was awkward and strange.

I was angry with myself for being … wrong. Everything about me was wrong. I was sure my parts were dysfunctional as well. It probably didn't even matter that he didn't want to touch me. I'd probably be sent back to the factory and then resold at a discount as "refurbished."

I wanted to ask him what his problem was, why he only kissed me softly on the hair or the temple, why there was no more passion, no yearning, no intensity.

But I was afraid of his answer. So we lay side by side in silence, night after night.

Until this night, when Jasper said, "Alice?"

"Yes?" I was hopeful yet afraid of what might come next.

"We've been together for a while now. A month. I'm here every night now."

_Here it comes_. He was going to say something awful. I was doing something wrong, and he was going to complain and criticize. I curled up onto my side and clenched my fists, bracing myself for the hurt.

"Yes?" I said again, my voice tiny and insignificant. I sounded simultaneously like a scared child and a frail old woman.

"I just … you know how much I love being with you, and how amazing our time together has been. It's just that I'd like for you to know _my_ life a little more. And I don't want to push you into anything, but this is hard for me too." He sighed, and I was surprised at how hurt he sounded when he added, "It makes me feel a little like maybe I don't matter to you."

I flinched, feeling the sting of his accusation. I was going to contradict him, but then I realized that he was right. He'd always been there for me, always asking me what I wanted to do, what I needed. He'd gone without complaint or hesitation to have tea with Fitzsie. I hadn't even once gone inside his home. I hadn't met his roommates aside from serving them drinks at New Year's. I didn't even know anything about his family. Fuck, I made him sleep in this tiny dollhouse bed every night. He was a growing boy who needed space to flop out.

Was I so selfish?

"I'm so sorry," I said, ashamed. "You must be so uncomfortable here, and you still come here night after night."

He burrowed his face into my hair. I could feel his nose bump against the back of my neck. He murmured into my skin. "No, darlin', I love being here with you. I _want_ to be here. But I just want to feel like you're meeting me halfway."

I was overwhelmed with self-loathing. _Selfish, selfish_ a voice said in the back of my brain. "I'm terrible," I said simply.

"Now, why would you say that?"

"I expect you to do everything for me, to make everything okay, and I don't give anything back."

"Sweet pea, you give me so much back just in the way you look at me."

I furrowed my brow. "That doesn't sound like an even exchange to me. It's not fair to you."

"You shared things with me that you never shared with anyone else."

"That doesn't count," I said, jutting out my jaw.

"Why not?"

"Because it's still all about me. _My _problems. _My_ issues. _My_ reasons I am defective."

Jasper sighed heavily. "Alice, I am a patient man. But I won't be patient when you beat up on yourself like this."

I laughed humorlessly.

"Why are you laughing?" He didn't sound angry.

"Because," I said, "I think it's a copout."

"What's a copout?"

"When I beat myself up. It's, like, I beat myself up so you won't feel the need to do it. It's less scary. I'm used to what it feels like when I harsh on myself, but when others do it, I'm terrified. It's a preemptive beat down."

"Do you really think that?"

"It worked, didn't it? You're not angry at me; you're comforting me." Maybe I was just a master manipulator.

"That may be, but beating up on yourself, no matter how used to it you are, takes a toll on your soul."

I considered this and was about to say something in reply when I realized I'd managed to shift the topic of discussion back onto myself.

"No," I said. "We're not talking about me now. Because that will mean I'm selfish. And I don't want to be selfish. I am meeting you in the middle. I'll do it. Let's go to your house."

"What, now?" Jasper sounded surprised.

"No, silly duck," I said, horrified. God, the idea of going over there right that minute gave me cold prickles. I needed time to imagine the scenarios, see it all planned out in my head.

"So what does that mean?"

"Maybe I can come over for dinner sometime. I'll ask for the night off."

"Thank you," Jasper said, kissing my neck. I got goosebumps up and down my arms. I wished he'd kiss me all over, but I didn't feel brave enough to ask.

"Tell me about the guys," I said while stifling another yawn.

Even in the dark, I knew Jasper was smiling. He talked about Emmett and Edward and their epic, misguided adventures until I drifted off.

I'd asked Rosalie for Wednesday night off. Wednesdays were slower, generally, so they'd be able to manage with one bartender. Rose could step in too, if things got hairy. She was annoyed at the late notice, but she didn't throw the shitfit I had expected. "Dinner with the boys?" she asked, the beginnings of a smile curling the corners of her mouth.

"How ... how did you know that?"

"I hear things," she snapped. Why was she blushing? I opened my mouth to say something, but she turned abruptly and strode back to her office, slamming the door.

Sometimes Rosalie scared me.

Jasper seemed so happy after I'd agreed to meet his roommates. It made me feel even guiltier about being so chickenshit earlier. It took so little to make him happy, and I'd deprived him for so long. When I was with him, I felt calm about it. But when Jasper would leave me to go to class, my heart pounded in my ears and sudden noises and movements startled me. How would I ever be able to handle it?

_Because he'll be at your side_. I wondered who said that, and a little nudging in my heart let me know Mary Alice was here.

***

Jasper waited for me in the foyer as I slowly made my way up the front walkway. I was clutching the Jell-o mold like a talisman for safe passage. This was really happening. I was so sick of worrying that I was almost relieved. At least it would be over soon.

I stepped over the threshold, holding out the Jell-o as tribute. Jasper took it from my hands, trotting away, and came back as I still stood with my back against the door. He hugged me tightly, and I took in a deep breath. Instead of his usual clean, soapy smell, he smelled like smoke and marinade.

"Why … do you smell so delicious?" I asked.

"I've been grilling!" he exclaimed with a big grin.

"In _February_?"

"It's never a wrong time to grill," he said, shrugging.

I brought his hands up to my face. They also smelled delicious. "Lean down," I commanded.

When he had stooped over, I sniffed his hair. "Your head smells like a meaty emporium," I said.

"That's a good thing, right?"

"_I _think so."

I stared down at my feet and wrung my hands awkwardly.

"Are you ready to do this?" Jasper asked.

"No," I admitted, "but we may as well get it over with."

Jasper ruffled my hair. "Nothing to worry about, pumpkin." He turned around and called, "Guys! Come meet Alice!"

I could hear voices arguing and a TV blaring, but no one came to the foyer. Jasper rolled his eyes. He bellowed so loudly that I jumped back a little. "DOUCHEBAGS! PAGING ALL DOUCHEBAGS! DOWNSTAIRS! NOW!" He looked at me sheepishly. "Um, sorry."

I … well, that was the last thing I'd been expecting. What happened to my perfect Southern gentleman? I doubled over in laughter and slid down the door. I couldn't say what was making me laugh the most—what he'd said, the way he'd almost forgotten I was there, or the look on his face afterwards, as if he were halfway to mortification and decided at the last minute to fuck it. I guess my nerves had also made me kind of punchy.

"Uh, is she okay?" I glanced over and saw two gigantic feet next to me.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and slowly came to standing. "Yeah. Yes, I'm fine. Hi." I waved.

"It is awesome to meet you," said the big guy. He looked even bigger out of the Max costume.

I shook his hand, a little afraid that he'd break me. "It's Emmett, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." He smiled, revealing some killer dimples. Okay, this wasn't so scary.

"I'm going to be polite and not mention the butt flap," I said as I watched Emmett redden.

Emmett threw up his hands in mock frustration.

"What?" I said, feigning innocence. "I'm not mentioning it." I leaned over to Jasper and stage whispered, "_Don't mention the butt flap. He's very sensitive about it_."

Jasper looked almost proud.

The hot DJ from New Year's—Edward—walked in at the tail end (no pun intended) of this exchange. "Ah, Alice," he said with approval. "I see you've already figured out how things work around here."

"Hey!" Emmett pouted. "Why does everyone dump on Emmett?"

Jasper said, "Well, maybe if _Emmett_ would occasionally not refer to himself in the third person like Bob Dole."

"Whatever, Colonel Sanders." Emmett stalked off to the kitchen.

"I'm from Texas!" Jasper corrected. "Do they call it 'Texas Fried Chicken'? No. No, they do not."

Edward smiled at me. "I'm sorry, but they will behave like such children."

Emmett called out from the kitchen, "Alice, don't be fooled by Harry Potter there. He's as big a fartknocker as the rest of us."

"For fuck's sake, Emmett, it's _Cedric_," Edward huffed. There must have been some history there, because he clapped his hand over his mouth and twitched slightly, blanching. "_Fuck_," he hissed through his fingers.

I could hear Emmett guffaw in the kitchen. I looked from Jasper and Edward and the kitchen.

"_Awkward_," I said out loud.

Jasper surprised me, sweeping me up in his arms and carrying me into the kitchen. The boys were all laughing, and I thought that perhaps I'd survive the evening after all.

Dinner was great, actually. Jasper had grilled up steaks and a beautiful assortment of vegetables. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend it was summer. I wondered if Jasper and I would still be together in the summer. It was a long way away. Still, the thought that we might be together, maybe take a road trip, rent a beach house somewhere warm for a week, and grill every night … I couldn't help smile into the cole slaw.

Emmett and Edward took turns mixing drinks for me. I wondered if they'd made some sort of wager over who could impress the pixie bartender more. They were a bit too interested in what I thought of their drinks. Edward was neurotically precise with the measurements of things, while Emmett gave off a bit of a mad scientist air, mixing unconventional ingredients with the feeling that things might "taste good together."

"Emmett, guy," I said, eyeing him, "are you putting Tang into my drink?"

He hunched over the counter, hiding his mixology work from me. "Don't question the master!"

"-Bater," I added quickly.

Edward gave me a high five. "Whitlock, your lady is the shizz."

"Everyone disrespects Winchester," I thought I heard Emmett say.

I got up from the table and sidled up to Emmett. "Sorry," I said, bumping him with my hip, "cheap shot."

"Eh," Emmett shrugged, "it's cute coming from you. Those nutsacs, on the other hand…" He jerked his head toward the table. He was using a citrus reamer to juice a lime into the Tang concoction.

"So, do you have a gun or something?" I asked, folding my hands and resting my elbows on the counter.

Emmett looked alarmed. "Um, what?"

"Oh, I thought you said … never mind."

Emmett swirled a butter knife in the tumbler. "Try this," he offered.

I took a sip. "This is awesome! It's like a boozy Orange Julius."

Emmett looked proud. "I call it the Orange McCarty."

"I think this one is my favorite," I said.

"Your favorite of mine, or your favorite from tonight?"

I took another sip. "I'd say my favorite of the night."

"Yes!" Emmett pumped a fist in the air. He walked over to Edward. "In your _face_!"

"Do you always smell this much like balls?" Edward said, waving Emmett away.

"Now, fellas," I said, wanting to keep the peace, "I won't have you discussing testicular odor around the Jell-o mold. It's delicate and genteel."

They behaved like typical boys, settling down for dessert. I was momentarily concerned that Emmett, with his gym thing and distrust of carbs, would shun the June Cleaver non-food dessert, but he was no snob. The guy liked to eat, and no one approaching the dessert with an open heart (or mouth) could deny the tastiness of the somewhat unholy union of lemon Jell-o, pineapple, and cream cheese.

I continued to sip on the Orange McCarty, eating only a spoonful or two of my dessert. I felt warm and tipsy and wonderful. Watching the guys rib each other and make every effort to include me made me feel like a part of something, like I belonged. It was the easiest social interaction I'd had in my adult life. While I'd had fun in college, I had been hyper-vigilant at the same time, not wanting to reveal too much, not wanting to be anything but the uncomplicated life of the party. I wasn't _trying_ to be anything now, but with Mary Alice in my heart and Jasper by my side, I was just … me.

Emmett and Edward chivalrously offered to do the dishes since Jasper had done all the grilling and I'd brought dessert. "Do you want to see my room?" Jasper asked, and I laughed.

"I don't think anyone's asked that since I was about eight years old."

"You didn't answer my question," he said.

"Of course," I said, reaching for his hand.

Emmett and Edward were already at it again, bitching like an old married couple while they did dishes. We walked away from the light of the kitchen and the friendly bickering, hand in hand into the dark unfamiliar.

Jasper led me up the stairs and pushed open the door to his room. He flicked on the lights. His room was tidy and a bit … unlived in. Like a motel room. It was probably because he'd been at my house so much recently. I felt a twinge of guilt. A desk in the corner was stacked high with textbooks. He had an acoustic guitar on a stand by his bed, a full-sized futon.

I perched on the edge of the futon and ran a finger along the neck of the guitar. "So, is this where you were when you'd call and sing me to sleep?"

"Mostly, yeah."

I smiled, thinking of those early days, of hearing his sweet voice in my ear as I drifted off.

I took my shoes off and tucked my feet under me on the bed. I took a long drink of the Orange McCarty, which I'd brought with me upstairs. I was relaxed and happy, and I hummed "Blackbird" to myself, staring into the bottom of the glass.

I leaned my head against the wall. I was a little tipsy. Not too much. Just content.

"Alice?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"Do you need me take you home?"

"Oh!" I said, sitting up and putting my glass on the desk. "I, uh, I thought maybe I could stay here, if that's all right."

Jasper smiled so brightly that I almost had to squint. "Of course it's all right."

I tugged his hand, pulling him onto the bed. "I'm really glad I came."

"Me too. Thank you. I know it was scary for you. It means a lot to me."

"They're hilarious," I said. "Do you think they liked me okay?"

"Are you kidding? It was like you've always been a part of us."

I looked away and smiled from ear to ear, my face burning with embarrassment and liquor.

"So, uh," I began, feeling suddenly brave enough after my evening to ask, "do you think you could, you know, kiss me? The way you used to?"

"What?"

"Or do you just not … think of me like that? I mean, it's okay if you don't," I added hastily.

Jasper laughed at me. Laughed! "Are you kidding? Do you know how hard I have to try not put my hands all over you?"

"Oh?" I was flushing some more, a little dizzy and a lot flattered.

"Alice, you are so beautiful, and you smell so nice, and your skin is like …" Jasper gripped the bedsheet with his hands. "I just don't want to spook you."

"Well, maybe I'm not so … spookable," I said, pouting.

With that, Jasper grabbed my face and kissed me hard, sucking on my pouty lip. He started kissing up my jaw to my ear. "Oh?" he breathed. "How about now? Spooked?"

"Nope," I whispered. My heart was pounding a mile a minute, but not out of fear.

"I've … been wanting to do something for you for a while," he said. "Something nice."

I gulped.

"And I don't expect anything back."

I nodded.

"I just want you to feel good."

I blinked.

"So what do you say?" he said, a smile curling up his face.

"Yes, please?" What was the proper etiquette for a situation like this?

"If you get scared or uncomfortable, I want you to let me know. You know I won't hurt you, right?"

"You won't hurt me," I repeated.

He kissed me again. "Even I can taste that Orange McCarty."

"Yummy," I said, not sure if I referred to the drink or the kiss. "So, um. What happens now?"

"Well," said Jasper with an impish look, "first I undo these buttons." He reached up and undid the button-fly of my jeans. The jeans opened, revealing a V of my soft, pale belly. "And then I kiss this part right here."

My stomach contracted a little when his lips brushed against my skin, unused to the sensation.

"And then?" I breathed.

"And then I might slide these down," he said, tugging on my jeans. I tilted my hips a little to help him. After he peeled them off, he tossed the jeans humorously over his shoulder. The gesture reminded me a little of a guy throwing pizza dough in the air, and I giggled nervously. He looked at me up and down. I hoped my underwear wasn't completely unfortunate looking.

"Might you?" I asked.

He groaned a little. "Do you know how beautiful you are?" He ran his hands slowly up and down my legs, barely touching.

"Trick question?" I said, my eyes rolling back in my head a little. "Or rhetorical?"

He began kissing from my ankle and up the inside of one leg. "Is there … any way … I can answer that … without sounding … either totally emo … or totally conceited?" I managed to get out. It wasn't easy through those little kisses.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, nipping the inside of my thigh lightly. "So how are we doing?"

I did a quick scan for panic. I didn't know if it was all the Orange McCarty, but I was feeling pretty chill. No panic. "Do you have a comment card you'd like me to fill out?" I asked.

"Not until afterwards," he said.

"Okay. In that case, I would say that _we_ are doing splendidly."

"Capital," Jasper said. "Are you ready for the next step?"

"What's next?" I asked, although I was pretty sure what was next.

"These beautiful lacy panties need to join their friend 'jeans' in the corner. They have a playdate."

"Oh, well, I'd hate for them to be late for their playdate," I said, trying to sound breezy while my heart thudded against my chest.

"I agree," he said, slowly sliding them down my legs. _Don't look down, don't look down_, I commanded myself, knowing I might lose it if I looked at my nakedness. Or possibly die of shame. He tossed my panties over his shoulder, and they landed perfectly on top of my abandoned jeans.

"Properly supervised socialization is very important for undergarments," I said, still refusing to look down.

"I've always thought so," he said, resuming his kisses up my thigh. I was shivering, my entire body humming in anticipation.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," I squeaked.

He parted me slowly and kissed me softly, almost reverently. It was very hard to keep my eyes open, especially when the licking started.

"I'm, um, going to close my eyes now," I announced.

"Mm-hmm," he murmured, his deep hum making my back arch.

"It doesn't mean I am freaking out."

"Mm-hmm."

And then words failed me entirely.

I was warm and shivery all over, and with my eyes closed I could just focus on the feelings. I briefly wondered if it were possible to make someone's mouth a historical landmark. Jasper's hand crept up to my face, grazing my lips. I kissed his fingertips, and he shocked me by pushing his finger into my mouth. I swirled my tongue around his finger, and he moaned right into me, which made _me_ moan some more, until it basically became one big moaning party.

Never stopping his sweet lapping, he brought his hand back down and slowly slipped his finger in. Even with my eyes closed, I could tell he was watching me closely, making sure I was okay. I was incapable of words, but I gave him a thumbs up, which made him laugh, muffled behind his kiss.

And then I was even incapable of hand gestures as he began working everything in tandem. Forget historical landmark, I wanted to figure out how to make someone a national treasure. I buried my fingers in his hair as I arched my back and gasped like a fish and let the waves break over and through me again and again.

Holy fuck.

When I was able to open my eyes again, Jasper was already beside me, grinning like a fool.

"What?" I demanded.

"You're beautiful," he said. I kissed him, his face still warm and wet from, well, _me_.

It turns out I was not defective after all. No need for factory refurbishing. I smiled triumphantly.

* * *

[1] Tori Amos, "Pandora's Aquarium," _From the Choirgirl Hotel_ (1998).

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A/N: Was it Chekhov who said that lemon Jell-o in the first act of a play must result in something lemony by the last act? Perhaps so.**

**I've been terrified about posting anything citrusy because writing them makes me feel stupid and clumsy and highly, highly unattractive. So, uh, be nice. And please don't say I'm doing it wrong, even if you secretly think that I am. You can take a girl out of Catholic school …**

**What are your thoughts on sending teasers for reviews for this story? Do they help? Should I scrap them? Honestly, I have no idea.**


	17. You’re the Prayer Inside Me

**A/N: Um, sorry it has been a while. I'm kind of obsessed with my other story at the moment, "Sleepers, Awake (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme)." Check it out in my profile. **

**As always, the Gorgeous Ladies of Ravelry (GLoR) rock my socks.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer rules, I drools. "Be cool, soda pop," comes originally from _The Outsiders_, but to me via "Veronica Mars."  
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Chapter 17: You're the Prayer Inside Me**

_And still he went farther, and all was so quiet that he could hear his own breathing; and at last he came to the tower, and went up the winding stair, and opened the door of the little room…. And when he saw her looking so lovely in her sleep, he could not turn away his eyes; and presently he stooped and kissed her, and she awaked..._

_-The Brothers Grimm _[1]

It was a brand new day. The first day of my new life, the first day I thought that maybe I was not damaged after all. I woke up in Jasper's arms, but in his bed. I was wearing a t-shirt of his, which fittingly enough said, "Mustache Rides - 25¢." When I'd looked for a shirt to wear when we'd gone to bed last night, Jasper had thrown me the first one he'd found in his drawer and then blanched when he saw which one it was.

"Um. Dare I even ask?"

"Oh. Oh crap," he'd said, looking like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

I turned around and slipped it on, too shy to let him see me take my top off. I wondered if he was looking at my exposed back. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. I put his t-shirt on and turned back around.

"How do I look?"

"Like I should be in prison."

I laughed and tugged the shirt down a little in an attempt to be modest. "So, really, tell me about this shirt. No, wait, let me guess—Emmett?"

"Right in one," he said, still looking mortified.

"Be cool, soda pop," I said, still feeling mellow from Emmett's fine Orange McCarty. Man, I was going to have to get the recipe for that one. It would be popular at the Unicorn.

I shyly took his hand and pulled him to the bed, where I nestled into him while his fingers danced on my back until I fell asleep.

I got up quietly and drew back the curtains in his room, filling his room with light. "Hey, pumpkin," I heard Jasper say with his arm draped over his eyes.

"Hey." I still had a huge grin on my face from last night. I tiptoed back to the bed and got under the comforter.

"So," Jasper said with his arm still draped over his eyes. "We need to talk about next Saturday."

"What's next Saturday?"

"It's … kind of a significant day."

"It is?" He sounded nervous, which made my stomach immediately tie into knots.

"Why don't you take a look at my desk calendar and tell me what next Saturday is?"

Why was he being so cagey? With trepidation, I walked over to his desk and flipped his calendar open. Oh, fuck. Saturday was February 14th. Otherwise known as Valentine's Day.

"No," I said quietly.

"No, what?" asked Jasper.

"No Valentine's Day. I don't … do Valentine's Day."

He smirked. "You mean the same way you don't _do_ New Year's?"

I smiled as he quoted my words back to me. Had it really been only a little more than a month since that night?

"Valentine's Day creeps me out," I said, playing with the hem of his Mustache Rides t-shirt. "Have you ever been out at night on Valentine's?"

"I may have, once or twice," said Jasper.

I was suddenly filled with a wave of jealousy. _Of course_. Why wouldn't he? I never had asked him about his past, preferring not to know. But now his bed seemed filled with the ghosts of girlfriends past.

I continued to fiddle with the hem of his t-shirt. "It's just, like, _Night of the Living Dead_ or something. Everyone's out in pairs, wandering, pretending to be in love or shit, and half the time they don't look like they're enjoying it. They feel forced to be doing stuff together, being 'romantic.' Nothing is genuine about it."

"I can see your point," he conceded, "but I'd still like to do something special. Because you crashed into my life, Alice, and I will never be the same."

Well, hell. How could I say no to that?

"Fine. But … does it have to be on Valentine's Day? Can we do, like, 'Valentine's Day Observed'?"

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, what about Friday then? Valentine's Day Eve."

"Alice, baby, that's Friday the thirteenth."

"Yeah," I said.

"If you're sure."

"I am. I like it. It's like a big 'fuck you' to the stupid industry."

Jasper sat up, rubbing his eyes. "And what industry would that be?"

"Um … you know, the, uh, Valentine's Day Industrial Complex."

Jasper laughed and rolled his eyes. "Come here, mustache girl, and give me a kiss."

"Ew," I said, backing away.

"What now?"

"_Mustache Girl_ doesn't exactly sound sexy."

"It doesn't?"

"I mean, it makes me think of a Dirty Juanita."

"Oh, sweet merciful … Alice, you are filthy. How do you know this shit?"

I pouted. "I hear things … in the schoolyard. Just … whatever. Don't call me 'Mustache Girl.'"

"Fine. But I'm still waiting for my kiss, Not Mustache Girl."

I groaned and turned around, crossing my arms petulantly, but Jasper stood up and spun me around and kissed me so hard that I forgot why I was annoyed.

***

Jasper had wanted to surprise me, so he told me only to clear my calendar for Friday the thirteenth. It actually worked out better for me, because the thirteenth was easier to ask for the day off work. Rose would have killed me if I backed out on Valentine's Day. Not that the Unicorn was the most romantic of destinations, but she was going to do her best to make it so.

The Monday before VD (a fitting abbreviation), I visited my mom as usual. I brushed her hair and gave her bright red handknit socks. Her face lit up when she took them out of the tissue paper I'd wrapped them in.

"My Mary Alice, did you make these?" She was having a good day. She remembered me today.

I nodded and knelt down to put them on her feet. She wiggled her toes in anticipation.

"And now, my sweet one, I have something for you." She bounced up and down on her mattress. I prepared myself for another collage.

"Close your eyes," she commanded, and I was reminded of my childhood again, because this was always how she gave me my birthday presents.

I closed my eyes and held out my hands. I heard her shuffle around and open a drawer, and then something soft was in my hands.

"Okay, you can open them."

It was a bulky, garter-stitch scarf, in a cheap acrylic yarn. My mother beamed with pride.

"Mom, where … where did this come from?" It wasn't a familiar item of clothing. I knew every last article of clothing she had here. I'd packed her bag. I brought her new clothes as the old ones wore out or no longer fit.

"I made it!" she crowed.

"But … how? I thought they didn't let you knit here."

"Oh, Custer lets me knit. Custer sits here and watches me. He's a good one."

I pretended to smile, but inside my heart ached. She'd so quickly slipped back into a different place. She must have found this scarf somewhere. Maybe another patient had dropped it. Maybe a visitor had left it behind. I'd ask the nurses' station about it later. I'd begged the staff so many times to let her knit, but they'd always said they were understaffed and couldn't accommodate her. There was no way that could have changed without my knowing. Besides, the stitches were uneven, not her hand at all, and where would she have gotten the yarn and needles anyway?

"It's lovely," I said, draping the scarf around my shoulders. _Go on; just let her pretend she made it. It makes her so happy_.

When it was time to go, I asked the nurses if anyone was missing a scarf. They waved me off dismissively, so I took the scarf with me.

It sat in the passenger seat on the drive home, filling in the space my mother should have occupied, a hateful piece of twisted, pilling yarn. I glared at it at stoplights. When I got back to the Convent, I balled the scarf up and jammed it into the glove compartment. I just couldn't stand to look at it any longer.

I was in a foul mood that night and told Jasper not to come over. I was so sick of it. I was so sick of feeling hopeful when my mother remembered my name, remembered who I was, and to have that snatched right away from me the next moment when she went off on some crazy tangent. I was angry thinking of Jasper and what other girls might have been in his bed with him. I should have just asked him, but I couldn't get the words out. And I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Maybe it didn't matter. He had chosen me. He must have not been happy with those other girls.

I paced my room and fought the urge to punch my pillow. I couldn't stop picturing Jasper with other girls out on Valentine's Day. It was so stupid.

I caved and called Jasper's cell after midnight.

"Hey, sweets," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"What's up?" he tried again.

"Mrf," I said.

"Mrf?"

"So who did you go out with on Valentine's Day?" I demanded.

Jasper laughed. "Seriously?"

"Maybe," I said in a small voice. "I'm cranky," I admitted.

"Do you want names and social security numbers or something?"

"I just want to know why you aren't with them now."

"Alice, I like women. They're beautiful and soft and smell nice."

I went to my bed and got under the covers in my clothes. This was not helping.

"But, Alice, they're nice the way that … I don't know, corn dogs are nice."

"You're comparing your ex-girlfriends to corn dogs."

"Okay, that sounded bad."

I made a sort of whimpering noise. "Why would you be with me when you could be with them, all soft and nice smelling?"

"How can you compare a corn dog to the sunrise, or that good clean smell after a thunderstorm? Or going to a party at a bar because your roommate dragged you and just hoping to kill time for a few hours, and seeing the room split open like … like a fucking geode, and there you are all perfect and refracting light into all the colors of the rainbow?"

I sniffled a little. "Okay then," I said.

"_Honestly_," Jasper teased. "You have no idea, do you?"

"Will you sing me to sleep?" I asked, still feeling a little empty inside.

I could head Jasper fumbling with his phone and the guitar—putting the strap around his neck, I thought. He started picking a beautiful melody and crooned, "Daddy's ghost behind you/Sleeping dog beside you/You're a poem of mystery/You're the prayer inside me/Spoken words like moonlight/You're the voice that I like."[2]

"Am I?" I murmured sleepily.

Jasper didn't stop playing, but he said, "Are you what?"

"The voice you like?"

There was a long pause, enough to make my heart catch, before he said, "And so much more."

***

Jasper was secretive all week about our plans for Friday, Valentine's Day Eve. I tried to pry information out of Emmett when I was by the boys' house, but he would just laugh at me and do a bizarre impression of Yul Brynner. "Seriously?" I said. "Yul Brynner?"

Emmett just said in a crazy accent, "Do you haggle with me, like a seller of melons in the marketplace?"

Obviously I would get nowhere with this approach. I would just have to wait.

On Thursday evening, Jasper told me to meet him outside the Unicorn on Friday at 5 P.M.

"What should I wear?" I asked.

"Something nicer than jeans and less fancy than a debutante dress."

"Thanks, that's very helpful."

I decided on a sort of '40s retro fishtail skirt with lacing up the back and a top with a deep, square neck. I worried about being under- or overdressed.

I took the bus to the Unicorn, thinking of the first time I'd come this way to meet Jasper, how little I'd trusted him, how worried I was, how guarded. And now? Now that felt like a past life.

As before, he was already at the pub, waiting for me, in a well-tailored suit and looking like a fucking GQ model. I realized I hadn't seen him in anything resembling a suit since the night we'd met. My heart fluttered, and I suddenly felt very warm. My eyes grazed the sidewalk, afraid to meet his eyes. I noticed he was wearing cowboy boots with the suit. Proud Texan, through and through.

He was watching me get off the bus with his hands clasped behind his back, and he wore a radiant smile. He offered his arm, which I readily took without prompting this time.

"Shall we?" he asked.

I slipped my arm through his and let him lead me down familiar streets.

It seemed we were reprising our first date, going to Las Cuentapuertas. I wanted to grab the waiters' familiar faces and kiss them, because they'd been here when we had begun to orbit each other. They'd witnessed the cosmic change. We ordered a celebratory pitcher of sangria, and I was happily tipsy by the time the check came.

"And now what?" I asked, running my fingers through his hair.

"Now, my sweet dik-dik, we fetch a cab."

I was feeling too good to object to the whole dik-dik business again.

"Mercer Street and Third Avenue North," Jasper said once we'd slid into the cab smelling strongly of artificial vanilla air freshener. I closed my eyes and leaned against Jasper while he planted small kisses on my forehead. I was nearly asleep when I felt the cab come to a stop.

"We're here, baby," he said, and I opened my eyes to see a fantastic glass-paneled building—McCaw Hall.

"What are we doing? Will you tell me _now_?"

"Darlin', we're going to the ballet."

I almost started crying right there. I'd always wanted to go to the ballet, but it was one of those things my mom and I never got around to doing. We would watch _The Nutcracker_ on PBS every Christmas in our pajamas, and my mom would say, "Some day, Mary Alice, some day I will take you to Seattle, and we will see the real ballet in the plush seats, and you will see how regular humans can fly."

"Oh no, was this a mistake?" Jasper asked, watching as I blinked back tears.

I threw my arms around his neck. "You are so wonderful."

The ballet was _Sleeping Beauty_, the original Petipa choreography, and I had trouble sitting still in my seat the whole time. It was so magical, and the dancers made me ache for the beauty of the line of their neck, the energy flowing from their fingertips. I was worried Jasper would be bored, but half the time he was swearing under his breath at some of the more fantastic jumps.

"_Holy shit_, did you _see_ that?" he said at one point, causing a few old blue-haired ladies to turn around and purse their lips in disapproval. I snickered. I loved his enthusiasm.

I was lost in the story, how no matter how hard the king and queen had tried to protect Princess Aurora, how they banned needles and spindles, they couldn't outwit fate. Just as she had been cursed, she pricked her finger on her birthday and fell as if dead.

But it wasn't just a curse. The Lilac Fairy made it so that she wouldn't die but only fall asleep. And her prince would come. She would have to wait a hundred years, but he would come. If the cursed spindle hadn't come, she wouldn't have found her prince. And maybe that was the way it was supposed to happen. If she hadn't suffered, she would have married one of those other princes from Act I. And maybe she would have been happy. Maybe she would have been the kind of happy that comes from knowing only joy and happiness.

Was happiness after sorrow sweeter? Was it more precious when you knew how much you could lose? Was Prince Florimund somehow more worthy because he found his way through the briars? Was he special because he had felt that there was something worth searching for behind the thorns?

Before I could read too much into it, Jasper was swearing a blue streak again as the Big Bad Wolf leapt in after Red Riding Hood. "This. Is. Fuckawesome."

I shushed him while snickering.

Jasper poked me in the arm. "Hey, so who are those two in blue?"

"I think they're, like, Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird or something."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so."

"I thought the program said 'Bluebeard.'"

"Uh, I'm pretty sure it's not Bluebeard. Wasn't Bluebeard that guy who married that lady and had a room full of his old, murdered wives?"

"I'm pretty sure the program said 'Bluebeard.'"

I wasn't going to argue with him any longer, because it was distracting me from the ballet. I quickly lost myself in the dancing, and Jasper poked me in the arm again. "You're right. It _is_ Bluebird. I checked the program."

"Yeah." Then I got a case of the giggles, imagining Bluebeard in the middle of this gorgeous ballet. That was pretty fucking morbid.

The two bluebird dancers were doing a beautiful and crazily athletic pas de deux, and every time the male dancer came near the female dancer, I whispered in Jasper's ear, "_I'm gonna murder you and stick you in mah closet_."

"Shut it," Jasper hissed back at me, but we were both laughing until tears were streaming down our faces.

"_I'm gonna MURDER you_," I said, laughing so hard my stomach hurt.

"Alice Prynne, you are just _wrong_. And _evil_."

And somehow, in that moment, I knew that I'd give Jasper everything I had, everything I was.

We got a cab back to his house after the final curtain call, and I think he knew too. The air between us was charged like before a summer thunderstorm where the sky turns green and the rain pelts down surprisingly cold through the oppressive air.

Jasper threw some money at the cab driver, not even looking at the bills, and we hurried into the house, creeping up the stairs, which we needn't have done, since neither Edward nor Emmett were home.

As soon as his door was closed, I pushed him against the wall and leapt up to kiss him. He bent down at the same time, and our mouths collided, our teeth clacking against each other. He picked me up and carried me to his bed, but I wasn't afraid. I peeled my shirt off, imagining the thicket of briars fading away, and my heart was beating so fast I thought he could probably see it from where he watched me at the foot of the bed.

He approached me, and I fumbled with the buttons on his oxford shirt. I was surprised at how smooth and hard his chest was. And that wonderful Jasper smell I savored so often on his neck was a mere shadow of the Jasperness on his beautiful, bare torso.

Unlike the other night when we joked and bantered, we were slow and careful and silent. He reached around me and undid my bra clasp with a level of skill that made me shiver. He slipped the wisps of lace off me almost reverently. He brushed the sides of my breasts with the backs of his fingers, and we looked each other in the eyes, barely blinking. It was as if we breathed as one, blinked as one.

Finally he spoke. "Are you sure about this, Alice?"

I bit my lip and nodded. "I've been waiting for you a long time. I just didn't know it."

"Give me a sec," he said, dashing out of the room. He was back a moment later. "I, uh, had to raid Emmett's stash," he said, waving a foil packet at me sheepishly.

Was it okay to lose your virginity with a borrowed condom? I guessed it was less disturbing than thinking about Jasper digging out a box of condoms from under his bed he had left over from some other girlfriend.

"Maybe I shouldn't have told you that," he said, looking at my face and guessing at my train of thought.

"Let's not talk about Emmett. Naked Emmett doing a Yul Brynner impression is really not doing it for me," I said.

"Let me try to make you forget I ever mentioned what's-his-name," Jasper said, easing me back onto the bed and brushing his lips over my exposed skin.

"Who?" I said breathily.

"Exactly," said Jasper, moving southward while pushing my skirt up.

"Here, let me get out of this," I said, sitting up, unzipping the back of the skirt, and shimmying out of it. I laughed.

"What is it?" Jasper asked, watching me with shining eyes.

"Uh, I'm just laughing at my incredibly unsexy skirt-removal shimmy."

He only said, "You are so fucking beautiful."

"You're wearing too much clothing," I said, gulping. Okay, now I was getting a little nervous. Awkward. Awkward. Oh my god, I felt awkward.

I watched him undo his belt buckle, his pants, and abandon his last bits of clothing. Gulp. I didn't want to stare; it didn't feel polite. But he was beautiful, like something majestic on a National Geographic special. I was suddenly fascinated by the ceiling in my attempt to be polite.

"Still okay there, darlin'?"

"Yes," I squeaked. "Can I … touch you?"

He laid his hand on mine and guided me to him, smooth and hard like his chest. "Hello," I said. It seemed polite to say hello.

Jasper smiled and groaned simultaneously. "I'm going to kiss you now," he said.

"Okay," I said, waiting for his lips.

"Nope," he said, pushing me back onto the bed.

"Oh, you didn't mean my mou… _oh_." And he'd slipped my panties off and tossed them over his shoulder.

Mr. National Treasure was hard at work again, until I just couldn't stand it. "I'm ready. I think. Please."

Embarrassed, I closed my eyes while he rolled on the condom. Okay, maybe I was still not entirely ready for this. But I wanted it so much. The thought that these faceless girls knew what it was like to have Jasper inside them—it was eating me alive. And the thought of sleeping for a hundred years and not knowing … I just couldn't stand it. I felt empty without him.

"Help me," he said, drawing my hand to him again.

"What … what do I do?" I was probably doing everything wrong. Why wasn't there a handbook?

"Just guide me in," he said, his eyes pleading.

With my help, he slipped in slowly, and I tried to breathe through it, through the pain. It wasn't as bad as I had imagined, sort of a good burn, and I felt complete and connected to him, this man that I loved. _I love him_, I was surprised to hear myself think. He started to move with more urgency, but suddenly I was burning and split in two and not in my body anymore. I floated away to a corner of the ceiling, and I could see myself on the bed with Jasper over me. I wasn't scared, exactly, but I was furious at myself. _Where am I? Why am I over here, when I should be __**there**__, with him?_

I could hear a voice as if underwater: "Alice! Alice, baby, please! Stay with me! Stay with me!"

I was drowning.

"Be here with me," the voice said, and I felt hands reach up and draw me down, fiery hands on my cheeks, and I was there again, with Jasper above me like an angel.

"Hi," I said.

"Oh, god, you scared me," he said. "I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm back," I said, reaching up a hand to touch his face to make sure he was real.

His face was beautiful with concentration and ecstasy as he lost control. _I'm doing that to him_, I thought, as my insides fluttered, and a white-hot fire burned in my chest of love and pride and possession. _He is mine_.

He pulled out, but before I could feel his absence he was kissing me all over again, wriggling down my body and using his tongue and hands again to make me moan and shudder and gasp in my own time.

Soon we lay exhausted and naked in each other's arms, and I had no shame. _That was me_, I thought. And I had never before had such a feeling of contentment and belonging. Jasper was drifting off to sleep, his breathing growing slow and regular.

I'd chance it. "I love you, Jasper Whitlock," I whispered, not sure if he could hear me.

He pressed his hands into my back, his heartbeat thrumming against mine as he sleepily murmured, "And I love you, Mary Alice Brandon."

My heart expanded in my chest until his words echoed in my head. _He called me Mary Alice Brandon_. My blood ran cold, and I shot out of bed, taking the sheet with me.

"_What_ … what did you just call me?" I stammered, backing away from him.

And I saw Princess Aurora in my head, pricking her finger, falling into a slumber, the briars growing once again higher than the castle walls.

* * *

[1] The Brothers Grimm, "The Sleeping Beauty," in _Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales_ (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993), p. 98.

[2] Iron & Wine, "Faded from the Winter," _The Creek Drank the Cradle_ (2002).

**

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A/N: Yeah, I'm a bitch. Sorry about that. **

**Turns out people don't care about teasers, but if you leave a review, I'll send you an excerpt of my eighth grade creative writing journal. Good times.**


	18. Ill Met by Moonlight

**A/N: Hey. Hi there. I tried to get this chapter out more quickly than usual because of the cliffie. Not sure if you'll be happy with where this one ends either though. Um.**

**Love to the Ravelry ladies. Hi!**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer controls the space-time continuum. I control my bowels, sometimes.**

**

* * *

Chapter 18: Ill Met by Moonlight**

_I have forsworn his bed and company._

_-Titania, _A Midsummer Night's Dream [1]

Jasper mumbled sleepily and rolled over. Time seemed to stop, and I felt like I had been flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen. I repeated, "_What _did you just call me?"

No response.

I wrapped his bedsheet around myself more tightly and backed up against the wall, sliding down to the floor. I said in a deadly whisper, "Jasper Whitlock, you wake up _right now_ and tell me what you just called me."

Jasper made some snuffly sounds and half-opened his eyes. "What is it, pumpkin?" He saw me on the other side of the room and sat up, finally awake. "Alice? Baby? What's going on?"

"Why don't you tell _me_, motherfucker?" I said, wrapping my arms around myself.

"What … what's wrong, baby?"

"You called me 'Mary Alice Brandon.'"

Jasper blanched.

"At least have the decency to answer me, asshole!" I picked up the closest thing I could find, one of Jasper's boots, and hurled it at him.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Just fucking tell me the truth. Tell me something that's real."

"I love you," he said. "That's real. That's the truth."

"Bullshit," I spat. "Why … how … ?" I didn't even know what I was trying to ask.

Jasper sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Alice, go to my desk and open the top drawer."

What did this have to do with anything? Was it more mind games? My curiosity got the better of me, and I did as I was told.

"What exactly am I looking for?"

"Do you see an ID on a lanyard?"

It was the only thing in the drawer aside from a few utility bills. An ID on a lanyard, Jasper's face, "Jasper Whitlock," employee at Meadowview Hospital. My blood froze in my veins.

"What the _fuck _does this mean?" I demanded, grabbing the lanyard in my fist and thrusting it toward his face.

He tried to lay his hand on my wrist, but I wrenched it away. "That's my job, Alice. I'm an orderly. I go there a few days a week. It's how I've been paying my way through school."

"So? What does that have to do with anyth—"

"I know, Alice. I know who you are. I recognized your necklace. I know your mom. I work in her wing."

The room was spinning, collapsing on itself, imploding. Or maybe the implosion was merely inside my head. I was having trouble breathing. I crouched on the floor with the lanyard still in my hand. I was going to be sick.

"How … long have you known?" I managed to choke out.

Jasper swallowed hard. "A while."

"And you … just fucking … _sat_ on that information? Thought maybe I didn't need to know?" I was getting hysterical. I was also quite aware that I was naked under the sheet. _His_ sheet. Suddenly I didn't want any part of him on me.

I flung the sheet off and scrambled to find my clothing. I retrieved my panties from the corner. I hurriedly pulled those on, and my skirt, and shoved my arms through my top. I could not find my bra. This … this felt a little too familiar.

"Alice, please. Please talk to me," he begged, getting out of bed and pulling on a pair of jeans hanging over his desk chair. I looked away. The sight of him now made me feel ill.

"I … I don't even know who the fuck you _are_. What _else_ have you hidden? What else do you know?" I gasped, thinking of everything I'd told him. He knew all the darkest parts of me. I stepped backwards and felt something crinkle under my foot—the empty condom wrapper … oh god, what had we just done?

"Alice, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you. I sensed that you didn't want to tell me. But I made a mistake. I shouldn't have hidden it from you." He started reaching toward me.

"Don't you fucking touch me!" I shrieked and looked for my shoes. "Oh, god, I let you touch me—I let you _fuck_ me. Did you get what you wanted, then? My virginity? Is that all?" Where the _fuck _were my shoes?

_Little bird, little bird, in the cinnamon tree _… I could hear singing loud and strong in my head. I covered my ears with my hands. "No! No, no, no, no!" The boys were surrounding me. They were ready.

"How long have you planned this?" I said, glaring at Jasper, who was white as a sheet.

"Planned? I … don't know what you mean. I'm so sorry, Alice. I should have told you. If I'd have known, I would have done this all differently."

_Little bird, little bird, won't you sing for me?_ I could smell them, the boys, all around me. They wouldn't get me this time. No. I would fight this time. I would fight.

I found a shoe and slipped it on. My other had been kicked under the bed. I crawled on all fours like an animal to retrieve it.

I would be ready to run.

"Alice, please," I could hear someone pleading. I felt a hand on my arm. "NO!" I screamed and struggled out of the strong grasp. It would bruise, I was sure, but at least I was free.

"I _love_ you," the voice said again, but all I saw were the boys. If they touched me again, I wouldn't be able to fight them off. I couldn't let them touch me.

A dark form came toward me again. "Alice, come back—come back to me. I know you're in there." Alice? Who was Alice?

I felt a hand graze my cheek, and I pulled away. I had my other shoe in my hand, and I swung as hard as I could. I felt the shoe make contact with flesh, the heel digging into skin. I heard someone hiss in pain. _Good_. Better to hurt first than be hurt.

There were arms around me, strong arms, and I struggled to free myself, kicking and scratching at whatever was near me.

"Alice, _please_," I heard again, but I was blindly reaching for my jacket, my bag, jamming my foot into the other shoe and running, running, running.

I don't know how I got home. Did I find a cab? Did I stumble onto a bus? I just found myself in front of the Convent, my face streaked with tears, my nipples chafed from running. The feeling of shame, of sneaking up the stairs and back into my apartment without a bra on, was all too familiar.

Well.

Back to my old life. Back to the Convent. The world was black and white once more. _I should have known it was only temporary_, I thought.

I slowly peeled off my clothing, dropped the pieces behind me in the hallway, and walked naked into the bathroom, trying my hardest not to catch my reflection in the mirror. I got in the shower and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it. As I scrubbed my skin raw with my washcloth, I couldn't help but think, _You're such a cliché_.

The place in between my legs was sore, and I leaned on the cool tiles and sobbed. What had I done? Why had I trusted him? _We told you what would happen_, I heard in my head. _You didn't listen to us_.

Now he knew the deepest secret about me, not just about my mother, but the deepest secret of my body. I had given it to him willingly, which only made me hate myself more. I had chosen unwisely.

_No_, said a voice in my head. Mary Alice. She was still here? _You trusted him because he was trustworthy_.

But he lied to me. He hid the truth from me. He knew all along. What else had he been hiding?

_Listen to your heart_, said Mary Alice.

My heart. I didn't even know what to believe anymore.

_Does it matter? Does it matter that he knows? He knows, and he doesn't care_, said Mary Alice.

I considered this for a moment. Why hadn't he just told me? I'd been working up my courage to tell him about my mother for so long.

_You know that's not true. You were never going to tell him_.

Maybe not. I had to protect her.

_Were you protecting her, or were you just too ashamed?_

I didn't know. I couldn't answer honestly. All I knew was that I had been afraid to let him know; the last time people had known about her, I had been put in danger.

I was surprised to find myself angry, hateful, toward my mother. This was all _her_ fault. Why couldn't she just be normal? Why did she have to ruin everything all the time?

I sank to my knees in the shower, the water still pounding down scalding hot on my body. _No, Mom, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I love you, Mom_.

I shut the water off and just sat in the tub with the steam around me until I began shivering. I stood up slowly on shaky legs, reaching for a towel. I rubbed my face dry, smelling deeply. It smelled like him. He must have used this towel. I threw it away from me in disgust, walking dripping wet to the hallway closet to get a clean one. My skin was covered in goosepimples as I toweled off in the hallway.

After I got into clean pajamas, I went to fetch my phone. Jasper had called five times. I erased his messages without listening. I turned my phone off.

I crawled into bed. The sheets smelled like him. I stripped the sheets off, and, too tired to make up the bed in my current state, I went to sleep on the bare mattress with a naked pillow under my head. I used a knitted afghan from the living room instead of my comforter. I clutched Bear-Bear to my chest and sobbed. I wasn't even sure why I was crying.

When morning came, I was surprised to wake up alone on my stripped bed, although I shouldn't have been. My body missed him. My body was a traitor. I tried to remember what had happened last night. There had been dinner, the ballet, the … feeling of Jasper inside me, locking eyes with him, touching his face to make sure he was real. My head hurt. I just didn't know what was real anymore.

Who was he?

I tried to picture him at Meadowview. Did he restrain my mother when she had a violent outburst? I pictured him driving to Meadowview just moments after leaving me, his secret double life. I hated him. I hated him for lying to me. Was he laughing at me behind his back the whole time? Was he trying to see what it would be like to fuck the crazy daughter of one of his crazy patients? Was this all some kind of weird research for his thesis? Was I just a project?

_Listen to your heart_, Mary Alice said again.

My heart was frozen and had nothing to say.

***

When I left for work that evening, the zombie couples were already out for Valentine's Day with their linked arms and fake smiles and trite roses. They were everywhere. I sat numbly on the bus, staring at my hands and nearly missing my stop.

When I got off the bus, Jasper was waiting under the awning. His face was a mess, cut and bruised, and he had a black eye. "Alice!" he called as soon as he saw me. "Please. Please talk to me."

"Go home, Jasper, if that's even your real name," I said, trying to walk past him.

He stepped in front of me, blocking my way. "Everything I told you is true," Jasper said. "I just didn't tell you everything. And that was stupid of me. Please."

I looked at his bruised face. "What the fuck happened to you?"

He ignored my question. "Alice, please, can we talk?"

I pushed past him. "No. Not now. Not ever." I knew if I let him talk, that I'd be melted by his words again, by the memory on my skin of his fiery kisses.

"I love you," he said again, and I nearly stopped. Oh, how I wanted to believe him.

"I've got to get to work," I sighed, shaking my head and reaching for the door to the pub. He held it open for me, hunching his shoulders and giving up. He did not follow me inside.

It was an explosion of pink inside, as if someone had vomited Pepto-Bismol all over the place. Rosalie was anything but subtle. I groaned. It would be a long night. I shut down my senses, blindly making drinks, trying not to see budding love all around me. It hurt too much to think about.

Customers made small talk with me, but I zoned out, going only by instinct, pouring the drinks I saw in my mind's eye. My mind wouldn't stop replaying last night in my head. I made a gin and tonic and felt Jasper poke me in the arm, asking me about the ballet. I pulled a beer from the tap and felt Jasper push me back onto the bed, covering me with kisses. I topped off someone's soda and touched Jasper's bare chest, warm, firm, and smooth under my fingertips.

I was worried Jasper would be waiting for me when I left the pub, but I did not see him. I walked home alone, following several happy and drunk couples as they staggered away from the Unicorn. How many of them would have their worlds turned upside down this night? How many would wake up tomorrow morning filled with regret?

When I got back to my apartment, there was a small envelope taped to my door. I had half a mind to rip it up, but curiosity got the better of me. I peeled it off the door and went inside.

I sat heavily on the couch and slid my finger under the seal, tearing it open. Inside was a single page ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, the toothed edges uneven—he'd obviously torn it from the notebook in a hurry. I unfolded the sheet, smoothed it onto my lap, and began reading the ballpoint script.

_My dearest Alice,_

_Since you won't talk to me or answer my phone calls, this is the only way I could tell you. I half wonder if you will tear this up before you read it, but I have to take a chance. _

_I've known your mom longer than I've known you, but I feel like I've loved you before I ever knew there was an Alice to be loved. When I realized you were the girl in Mary Louise Brandon's photograph, I loved you even more. I should have said something to you then, but I sensed a wall from you and wanted to respect your privacy. _

_I fucked up last night, big. But if I called you by your secret name, it was only because when I was half-asleep, when my defenses were down, my subconscious-self wanted to say that I love __**all**__ of you, not just the Alice you present to the world. I love the hidden you, the secret you, the scared you, the scarred you. All of you. You are all Alice to me, and I love you, every version of you, the known and the unknown. _

_I don't know if you'll be able to forgive me, but I'll be waiting until the end of time._

_Yours,_

_J_

_P.S. You don't have to worry about running into me. I won't come by your work anymore. You know how to reach me._

Shit, he really did make it hard to stay angry at him. I wondered if he came here straight from the pub, waiting outside until someone let him into the building. I pictured him sitting in the hallway with his back to my door, writing this letter. I wondered again at his bruised face, the black eye. Had he gotten into a fight today?

_Come this way_, I felt Mary Alice pull me. I was led to the clothing I'd abandoned the night before, still in the hallway like debris washed up from the sea. I felt compelled to pick up one of the shoes I'd been wearing last night. Mary Alice moved my hand, wrapped it around the shoe. I remembered the sensation of the shoe on skin, a yelp of pain.

She removed the veil from my eyes in my memory of last night as if she'd been watching from a corner of the room. She made me see what she had seen when I'd hit Jasper with my shoe, breaking skin. She showed me scratching and kicking and scrambling to get away, Jasper just taking it, not fighting back, not protecting himself.

I remembered again his face outside the pub, the cuts, the puffy lip, the black eye.

He hadn't been in a fight. I had done that to him.

I saw in my head Mr. Crandall's face after my mom attacked him. Granted, the damage there was far more severe, but the truth stared me in the face. I was just like her. The shoe dropped from my hand and clattered to the floor.

Oh god.

_I was just like her_.

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[1] William Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, 2.1.63.

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A/N: Don't despair too much. I have a feeling these crazy kids might make it.**

**People seemed to dig my eighth grade journal, so once again I'm offering a journal excerpt if you leave a review. **

**Thanks for reading.**


	19. You'll Go Home w Only Strangers Watching

**A/N: Thanks for the love and reviews. Kisses to my fabulous cheering squad at Rav Unicornia.**

**Disclaimer: This one time, at band camp, Stephenie Meyer wrote some stuff. I was too busy with my flute … wait, what? This conversation never happened.**

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Chapter 19: You'll Go Home with Only Strangers Watching**

_How I couldn't be what you'd need_

_But oh how I could make you bleed _

_- Vienna Teng _[1]

The shoe seemed to fall in slow motion through viscous air, tumbling out of my hand, stopping for a moment, suspended in defiance of gravity, before finally smacking mercilessly against the floor. The sound waves of the heel hitting the hardwood floors echoed again and again in my ears, or maybe it was just the sound of my heart breaking. I'd hurt him. I'd damaged his beautiful face. I'd been the one to do that to him, and I didn't even remember. I looked at my hands, so small, like child's hands. What were they capable of? What could they do beyond my control? Did my mother's hands once look like this?

I picked up the shoe again and looked at the heel. Did I hurt his face with this? I touched the heel reverently, since Jasper's face wasn't there for me to trace and to soothe. _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry_, I said again and again in my head to the spot on the shoe that must have pierced his skin. Maybe he wouldn't let me anyway. He already knew about my mom, so he knew where I had come from. _I can remember where I come from_. He knew. He knew why I'd hit him and could probably tell I wasn't even aware of what was going on. He knew I was crazy.

I was so ashamed. I didn't even care anymore that he'd kept his knowledge from me. I blamed myself more than anything else. If only I'd been upfront about everything, then maybe … but, no. _Be honest, Alice. That never would have happened._ I never would have told him. I thought I was protecting her, but I was really just trying to protect myself. And he sensed my shame and tried to protect me too. I had doubted his intentions, his secret-keeping, but his letter, his letter was sincere. I knew that in my heart.

He loved me anyway. He still loved me, despite what I'd done to him, despite where I came from. All I had to do was pick up the phone, and he would be here.

But.

But I just couldn't face him now. How could I? I was scared that it was finally happening to me. I'd always known I was living on borrowed time, that one day I'd end up just like my mother. And now here it was, staring me in the face with a black eye and a bruised lip. Oh god, what was happening to me?

The walls started slipping away, and everything I knew melted. My heart was pounding in my chest, my skin was clammy, and I had a funny taste in my mouth. I had to crawl on all fours to get to my bed, too afraid of the floor disappearing from under me. I clutched Jasper's note in my hand as I crawled.

When I got to my bed, I reached with shaky hands to put his letter in my shoebox of Jasper's sweet napkin doodles, but it didn't seem right. Those were from a before time, from an innocent time before the darkness came. The darkness was here now as I crawled like an animal with the lights off. Even if the lights had been on, I don't know if I would have been able to see.

I climbed up into the bed in my clothes and slid his letter under my still-bare pillow. When I shifted my weight in the bed, I could hear the rustling of that thin sheet of notebook paper. It was a sad, shadow version of Jasper's lullabies to me, a counterfeit relic instead of a ray from his actual soul.

_It's my fault he's not here_.

I wrapped the afghan around me, swaddling myself as tightly as possible, as if in a mother's embrace, or perhaps a cocoon, hoping that constricting my movement would somehow keep me from losing myself to the void, to wherever my real mother had disappeared to. Or maybe in the morning I'd find myself transformed.

I woke up the next morning still tightly bound. I must not have moved all night. I was still here, in my body, in my brain. I was still Alice and Mary Alice, the raven-haired and the fair-haired, the damaged and the innocent. I sat up and touched the wall by my bed. It felt solid and real. I touched my face—cold, tear-stained, but still real. I could feel my hand on my face, and my face on my hand. I was still here, inside and out. The darkness hadn't claimed me yet. It had given me another day.

Was it even worth it, without him? Wouldn't I rather be stolen from my body, unaware that there ever had been a Jasper?

I reached my hand under the pillow and reread Jasper's letter. I ran my fingers across the back of the letter, feeling where his pen had made indentations in the paper. I tried to picture him writing it, clutching the ballpoint pen in his hand, the hand that had touched me and loved me, the hand that I'd shoved away. I brought the paper to my nose, but it smelled only of ink and paper, not of Jasper. I could barely remember what he smelled like, but I felt empty without his scent surrounding me, calming me.

_You miss him. Just call him_.

I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Even if he forgave me, even if he accepted me knowing my history, it was only a matter of time. It would only be a matter of time until it would be Jasper locking me away, visiting me, slowly watching my mind deteriorate and my body atrophy, until finally he would give up. One day he would just decide not to show up again. One day I would wait for him, and he would not come. I would be alone, holding my hand up to the reinforced metal screens, seeing the overcast skies through the small hexagons made by the chicken wire embedded in the glass. And I wouldn't even blame him for giving up on me. Who would volunteer for that kind of life? Who could love me that much aside from my own flesh and blood? The only flesh and blood I had left was my mother. So there would be no one. Just me and a bunch of strangers.

I could only hope that I wouldn't be aware, that I'd be living in some world where I didn't know who I was.

But if that happened, where would Alice go? Would she float away like smoke? Or would she be trapped in a flesh prison like a lightning bug in a jar? I tried to think of my mother, her confusion. Some days she was cheerful and singing to herself, innocent as a child, happy with brightly colored paper and new socks and a brush pulled gently through her thinning hair. Some days she begged me to take her home. She knew. She would come back to me briefly, but only on loan, only a momentary reprieve of her bewitchment. And the fear in her eyes, the betrayal … I wiped hot tears away with the heels of my hands. The guilt I felt for leaving her behind was magnified as I thought of the fate that awaited me. Even the imagined pain I felt was unbearable. What did she feel? How could I leave her, week after week, in that place?

There should be a limit to the amount of pain a body could feel. I wished I had a fuse box; I wished that I could just max out and shut down. Instead I kept feeling more and more until I thought I would break. But the sorrow never stopped. _That's the price for being alive_, I thought.

It took all the energy left in me to get out of bed. I had promised to come by Fitzsie's today. I hadn't seen her as much now that I'd been spending so much time with Jasper. I could find the energy for her. She was depending on me. _Do it for her, since you can't do it for your mom_.

After dressing for the day, I put things for tea together in my basket. I'd finished the tea cozy, and I had been working on something for Jasper—just a hat, because I'd been too superstitious to knit a sweater for him. I believed in the boyfriend sweater curse. But maybe it was like the Ancient Greeks trying to escape their fate—no matter what their choices, no matter what they did to change their destiny, their every action would pull them closer and closer to what the gods had already decided for them. Maybe even just thinking about knitting him a sweater had brought the curse upon me, had ruined any chances we had at being together.

No, that was silly. I hadn't ruined things by considering making him a sweater. I had ruined things because I was Alice, because I was my mother's daughter, and this was destined always to happen.

I knocked on Fitzsie's door—shit, even her new nickname reminded me of him—and waited. I tried to smooth my face into a neutral expression. I was here to cheer her, not to thrust her into my stupid emo world.

"Alice! Where's that hunky fella? Your good egg?" she asked as she opened the door and saw me standing very much alone.

"Oh, Jasper?" Saying his name out loud made my chest constrict. "He … he's busy," I said. Maybe he was. Maybe it wasn't a lie.

"Well, come on—don't let that draft in," she said, shooing me in.

Edgar Allen Poe was already circling my ankles, awaiting his tea. I crouched down and scratched his head, feeling the vibrations of his purring. "Hey, sweet guy," I murmured. "You'll love me no matter what, won't you?"

"Hats!" shrieked Fitzsie. "I've picked one out for you." She shuffled over to me with an enormous pink hat dripping with ostrich feathers. She plopped it on my head, not waiting for me to stand up.

"Thanks, Fitzsie," I said, sighing as I stood.

"Are you all right?" she asked, peering into my face.

"Of course I am." I brushed off my knees. "Just getting harder to get off the floor, I guess," I joked lamely.

I excused myself and readied the tea. Edgar Allen Poe stepped daintily behind me, tail high like a flag, just the tip twitching back and forth.

_Hold it together_, I scolded myself. _You can bring her joy, or you can drag her down with you. She doesn't need more sorrow in her life_. I had been given this day, had woken up aware of me, in my body. I would be grateful. I would not wallow. I would not squander it. I would bring as much joy as I could, before I was lost completely.

I walked out holding the laden tea tray as carefully as I held my face in a tranquil expression. _I will be cheerful. I will appreciate this day_. Fitzsie wore a simple cloche, elegant and understated. I poured the tea and listened to her metal needles clacking.

"Hmm," she said, looking up at me and frowning.

"What's wrong? Are the cookies stale?"

"You're alone again," she said. "Like when I first met you. What happened?"

"What are you talking about?" _Don't waste your time or hers_. "I'm by myself today, sure. But I'm also with you."

She pointed a metal needle at me. "Don't lie to me, girl. I'm no fool."

_Hold it together, hold it together …_

"Where is he?"

Before I could stop them, two fat tears rolled down my cheeks. "I'm sorry, F-fitzsie," I blubbered. "The last thing you need is me moody and sad."

"No," she said, reaching across the table and poking me with her needle, "the last thing I need is someone putting on a happy face when she doesn't mean it. I saw the doctors do that when my darling husband got sick. Bullshit!" she cried, poking me in the arm again.

I was shocked at her swearing. "Mrs. Fitzsimmons?"

"Sorry, dear, but I swear like a sailor when I get emotional. You've been biting your tongue since you got here. Don't you try to protect me. What happened?"

"I messed up," I said quietly. "Everything was perfect, and I ruined it."

"With the good egg?"

"Yes," I whispered, afraid that my vocal cords would tear with grief if I tried to phonate.

"Nonsense. I saw how he looked at you. Fitzsie knows," she said, pointing to her temple with her needle.

"Oh, be careful, Fitzsie," I said. "You'll poke your eye out."

"Don't change the subject," she said, lowering the needle. "That boy was _smitten_. You can't scare off a boy that smitten."

"Time can change everything," I said, staring sadly into my teacup.

"Smitten," she said again, nodding and ignoring me.

I felt Edgar headbutt my leg, so I picked him up and held him on my lap. "Sweet thing, my sweet boy," I crooned as he batted at me with his pink padded paws.

"I know you'll be all right," said Mrs. Fitzsimmons. "But you can cry if you want to. Don't hold it in on my account. I have a good cry when I need."

"Thank you," I said, letting the tears stream down my face. I was still afraid to let out the wrenching sobs that I felt churning in me. It was a bit like holding in a sneeze. I sang instead, not even thinking, just letting the first phrase that popped into my head slip out, "Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose …" [2] I held Edgar to my chest, feeling his warmth through my shirt.

"Well now, I didn't know you could sing," said Fitzsie. "Come on, let's do a duet. Something less … morose. I used to shake my stuff at the church fundraisers." She randomly broke out into an Ethel Merman belt, singing a few lines from _Annie Get Your Gun_. "Do you know 'Old Fashioned Wedding'?" she asked.

"Of course," I said. I hadn't been in years of choir for nothing.

"Well, you take the Old Fashioned part. I'll be the sassy broad." We sang together, her voice brassy and strong despite her frail frame, and I felt my sorrows momentarily melt away. She grabbed her free metal needle and used it as a microphone, and soon I was laughing with her.

"_I don't want to be married at aaaaaaaaaall!_"[3] she finished, flinging her needle across the room as she threw her hands out into a giant jazz-hands finish. Edgar jumped off my lap and scurried away.

We spent the rest of the afternoon thinking of duets we both knew, and before I knew it, it was time to go to work.

I gave Fitzsie a big hug. "Thank you, darling Fitzsie. You have no idea what this means to me."

"Don't you get sappy on me, girl," she said, smacking me on the back a few times. "It's going to be just fine. Trust Fitzsie. Smitten. I'm not wrong about these things." And she pushed me out the door.

Work was a blur. My heart weighed heavily on me, and I had no Fitzsie to sing away my sorrows. Every time the door opened, I looked up, expecting Jasper, fearing Jasper, and feeling disappointment when he did not appear. How could I want him to walk through the door so badly when I was so ashamed to see him again? _Please, please, Jasper_, I thought each time, before shaking my head at my foolishness.

Near the end of the night, I saw Emmett walk in. I held my breath, waiting to see if Jasper was with him, but I saw him sit in a booth alone. Did he know I had hurt Jasper? I couldn't even make eye contact. I ducked into the bathroom and leaned against a stall, feeling my pulse beat against the cool metal doors.

I walked out again, pretending I didn't know anyone, that I didn't see anyone. Everyone was a stranger. I would feel nothing. I would react to nothing. It wasn't that hard, once I put my mind to it.

***

When I got home, the starkness of my bed shocked me. I got new sheets and pillowcases out, but when I saw the pile of sheets I'd torn off the bed on Friday night, I couldn't bear closing this chapter of my life away. Not yet. I put the old sheets back on. I got inside the bed and inhaled deeply, remembering his arms around me. I slipped Jasper's letter inside my pillowcase.

I swaddled myself again, trying to buy myself another day, another twenty-four hour reprieve. When I woke up again in the morning, aware of myself, I cried with relief. Another day, another gift. How much time was left now?

I knew I should be out taking advantage of these last stolen moments, but I couldn't get out of this bed that once again smelled so much like Jasper. How long before his scent would leave my bed completely? How long before I'd forget his touch, the feel of him filling me inside and out?

I couldn't think of a better way to spend my last sane hours on this earth than enveloped in his scent. If this would be my last memory, I would have no regrets. I wanted to remember him as long as my condemned brain would allow me.

It was Monday, once again time to visit my mother. Time to glimpse my near-future. Time to drive the hour out, imagining now Jasper making this same drive several times a week. What did he know about me? What did he know of my mother? I thought of this as I lay in bed until the sun began to fade, not even getting up to eat. I left the bed reluctantly when it was time to see my mom.

When I parked the car at Meadowview, Fitzsie's glove compartment popped open. As I reached over to shut it, I saw the scarf again, the scarf my mother had claimed to have made. _Custer_, she'd said. Someone named Custer had watched her knit this. Was it possible? I took the scarf with me, looking at it with new eyes.

When the orderly—I wondered if he ever worked the same shift as Jasper—let me into my mom's room, I prayed that this would be one of her lucid days. I needed to know. "Mom?" I asked, clutching the clumsily knit scarf in my hands.

"My Mary Alice," she smiled, and kicked her legs back and forth.

"Mom, do you recognize this?" I held up the scarf.

"Where did you get that?" she asked, wrinkling her brow.

"You gave it to me."

"I did?"

"You … you said you'd made it."

"Oh," she said. "I said that?"

Why did it matter if Custer were real or not? I wanted to give up, but I pressed further. "You said that Custer watched you knit."

"Custer!" she shouted, clapping her hands together. "Is he here today? He's my favorite."

I sat on the bed next to her. "Tell me about Custer, Mom. What is he like?"

"He's emerald green! Like the city of Oz!" She bounced up and down, eyes shining.

"Is his name Custer? Custer what?" I asked, rubbing her back.

"Just Custer. He looks like a Custer. A gentleman. Emerald green. Oh," she said suddenly, looking at me. "You've lost your light. Where did it go?"

I ignored her question. "What does Custer do?"

"He watches me. He brings me yarn and sings to me. He asks me about you," she said, still looking at the space around my head. She cupped my hands in her face, looking deeply into my eyes. "Oh, Mary Alice, what has happened to you?"

"I'm fine, Mom, I'm fine," I said.

"Oh, you've got the scarf I made you!" she said, reaching for it and draping it carefully around my neck. "Custer said this color would suit you. He said he could tell from the photo. He always looks at the photo," she said, pointing to the desk. "Such bright and sunny yarn," she said, adjusting the scarf. "Your light was this color, dandelions and sunlight, but it's gone now."

She reached up a hand to pat my cheek but suddenly raked her clipped nails against my face. "Where is your face?" she screamed. She started digging at my skin. I tried to hold her hands back, but she was strong. "Where is Mary Alice? Who are you?"

The orderly outside the door heard the commotion and came in.

"Ms. Brandon! Please!" he said.

"Get away from me!" she screamed, crouching behind the bed. "Where's Mary Alice? What have you done to her? I want my baby! My baby!" She started to pull on her hair. The orderly had her in his arms, trying to keep her still. She was shrieking, trying to bite him.

"Assistance!" he yelled as he restrained her.

It was mayhem, my mother screaming and kicking, the orderly holding her down, nurses running in, more orderlies, syringes coming out.

"Don't hurt her!" I yelled, weeping.

The night nurse patted my hand. "We've got this, sweetheart. She'll be okay. You should go home. She's fine. We won't hurt her. She just got overexcited. Go on, now." Her voice was gentle but firm, and I had no choice but to go back to the car.

I wanted to call Jasper so much, but flashes of my mother flailing, scratching me, trying to hurt the orderly, gave me a glimpse of what I'd done to him. How could I face him? I focused on the bed waiting for me at home, the bed I knew still smelled like him. That would have to be comfort enough. It was more than I deserved.

***

When I got to work the next day, I was surprised to see Emmett again, standing under the awning. I was hoping he'd ignore me as I was prepared to ignore him, but instead he nodded at me. He was holding a rumpled package under his arm.

"Alice! Hey, Alice!" He waved like a little boy. Maybe Jasper hadn't told him.

"Hey," I said, nodding slightly.

"So, uh," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I don't know what's going on with you two, but Jasper's been holed up in his room and muttering and swearing, and he came out today and begged me to drop this off for you."

I searched his words for secret judgment, but all I heard was confusion and concern.

"I like you, Alice," he said simply. "I love Jasper like a brother. You make him happy. Just … I don't know what happened, and it's not my place, but he's a good guy, Alice. And he misses you." He handed me the rumpled package, something floppy wrapped in newspaper and masking tape.

I thought he'd disappear around the corner, but he turned around and walked into the pub.

I sat down on the sidewalk, ignoring the dampness and chill, and regarded the package. I tore it open, getting my fingers smudged with newsprint.

It was a square swatch, or, rather, something almost square, in a familiar cheap acrylic yarn. Like dandelions and sunlight. A slip of paper fluttered out, another sheet of notebook paper.

_My dearest Alice,_

_I know I said I would leave you alone, but I had to give this to you. I was going to save this for your birthday and surprise you with it, but you never told me when it was. So happy unbirthday, unless I happened to luck out and pick the right day._

_Before you ask, it's a dishcloth. You'll just have to trust me on this. _

_How do you not gain stitches on every row? I admired you so much already, but even more so after this crime against yarn and geometry. I thought my fingers were well trained, but those little needles are vicious, two small sticks far more confounding than six strings ever could be._

_I miss you. My arms remember your shape and ask me why they are empty. I tell them it is because their owner is an idiot. _

_Waiting for you on the other side of forever,_

_J_

My fingers fumbled for my phone before I was even aware what was happening.

Half a ring. "Alice? Is that you?" His voice thrilled the blood in my veins. Oh, I'd missed him so much.

I tried to make my mouth work. "Are you Custer?" I asked, the yellow dishcloth draped over my other hand.

"Yes, ma'am," he said stiffly, uncomfortably.

How could he be so generous? I brought the dishcloth up to my face. It smelled like his hands. The yarn pressed against my scratched cheek and his voice in my ear were no substitute for the man I now knew I would never be able to live without. I wanted to tell him this, but I got a flash again of his broken face. Feeling like a monster, I began to cry, my sobs turning into fragile puffs in the cold evening air.

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[1] Vienna Teng, "Antebellum," _Inland Territory_ (2009).

[2] Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, "Witch's Lament," _Into the Woods_ (1986).

[3] Irving Berlin, "Old Fashioned Wedding," _Annie Get Your Gun_ (1946).

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A/N: This phone conversation isn't over yet! Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!**

**I'll post teasers for the next chapter on Twilighted and Rav when I have one ready. And reviews get an excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal.**


	20. Not Your Zelda

**A/N: Thanks for your patience. Lots of nerdy references in this chapter (I mean, fucking Hawthorne!), so be prepared. As my sister once said, "Kissass, my ass, you kissass."**

**Love as always to my Ravelbitches.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns a lot of stuff, including this shizz. I own $55 night face cream that I always forget to put on.**

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Chapter 20: Not Your Zelda **

_She was as lovely as the dawn, and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath—richer than a garden of Persian roses…. But a certain sage physician, happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in regard to her…. That this lovely woman had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was so imbued with them, that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath, she blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison!—her embrace death!_

_- Hawthorne _[1]

I still sat on the cold concrete, my back against the wall by the entrance of the Unicorn, staring at the dishcloth Jasper had knit with my mother, the dishcloth he had knit for me. He had _knit_ for me. And he'd somehow brought my mom these supplies and given her back a sunny fragment of her past.

"You … did all that for my mom?"

"Had to, didn't I?" His voice sounded gruff from disuse.

"No. But thank you."

I could tell neither of us was breathing.

Finally I heard Jasper sigh heavily. "I'm so sorry, Alice. I should have told you."

"Maybe. But I should have told you first." My face burned, thinking of his bruises. I couldn't put it off any longer. "Are you … are you all right?"

"No," he said, his voice breaking a little. "I miss you."

"How can you?" I asked.

"How could I not?"

"I mean," I said, balling up the dishcloth, "how can you miss me after … after what I did to you?"

"What did you do to me?"

Was he trying to break me by making me say it? "I … I hurt you, Jasper. I gave you those bruises. I know now. I remember."

He sighed heavily—from memory of the pain? From wanting to distance himself from me? Was he going to lie to me again? I wanted him to lie to me. I wanted him to tell me I was mistaken, that I hadn't done that to him, that he'd gotten into a fight on his own. _Please let that reality be true_, I wished over and over with my hands clenched.

"You weren't in your right mind, Alice. And I shouldn't have tried to stop you. I should have let you go like you asked, but I was scared, scared to lose you if you walked out that door."

Hearing him confirm what I'd done to him made me lose hope completely. "I'm no good for you, Jasper," I whispered. "You should let me go."

"Alice, baby, you're the only reason I wake up with a smile on my face. Or used to. In the mornings I forget, in that haze when I'm just waking up, and I think you are with me in my arms, and I smile and think I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And then I wake up and remember you're gone."

"My bed still smells like you," I dared to whisper, spreading my hand out and running it against the rough, cool concrete, imagining the bed I now hated solely because Jasper wasn't in it.

"Listen, I don't want to push you, and I know you have every right to be furious with me, but do you think we can meet in person? Talk things through? I can't stand not seeing you. I mean, I said I'd be patient and I'd wait forever, but hearing your voice and not getting to see you, I … I just can't …" He stopped speaking abruptly as his voice started to wobble a little.

"Aren't you afraid?" I asked softly.

"Afraid?"

"Afraid I'll do it again?"

Jasper was silent again. What was he thinking about? "That's not who you are, Alice."

"What does that even mean?"

"I mean, no. No, I am not afraid."

I glanced at my watch. I was already late. "Listen, I have to go."

"Okay," he said a little too quickly, resignedly.

"No, I mean, I have to go in now. But can you meet me here at closing? Is it too late?"

"It's never too late for you."

"Wear a face mask," I joked weakly.

"No more masks," he said, and hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand for a second, trying to imagine Jasper here in a few hours, trying to ready myself to see the damage I'd done to his perfect face. I picked up his dishcloth, touched it to my scratched cheek again like a poultice, and, after shaking my head of maudlin thoughts as best I could, pushed open the door to the pub.

I avoided looking at Emmett even though I could sense his presence. He was a good guy and a loyal friend—I could tell that much. But he was so big, practically exploding, Hulk-style, out of his clothes. He could hurt me if he wanted. If Jasper ever told him what I'd done to him, maybe he would. He didn't seem the type, though. Something told me that he would never lay a hand on a woman in violence. But still, my sense of self-preservation told me not to get close enough to find out.

I put on my mask again, slipped on my Novocain skin, and numbly mixed drinks, smiling like a trained child beauty queen and making small talk with only one lobe of my brain. I wondered if this was what it would be like when the darkness took me. The kernel of Alice was far, far buried, wondering about Jasper but not daring to let it come to the forefront of my thoughts. I'd never get through my shift otherwise.

I hadn't realized I was just rubbing the bar down in the same tiny circle until Rosalie came over and snapped her fingers in the air in front of my face. "Hey, why are you still here? I've already closed out the registers."

"Oh," I mumbled, pretending to busy myself with making sure all the labels of the hard stuff were facing out.

Closing time meant that Jasper was outside waiting for me.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself, to center myself the way I would to get over opening night jitters, because I'd be putting on a performance now, trying to appear as sane as I could. While I wanted to convince him, for his own good, to stay away from me, oh, oh how my body wanted me to lie, to do whatever it took to get him to stay.

Rosalie was in her office—I thought I heard giggling—and I made my way to the outside door, switching off lights as I went. My hand rested on the handle, cool and indifferent against my skin. On the other side of the door was the man I loved, the man I destroyed. It had been four nights since we had slept in the same bed, wrapped in each other's arms. It felt like a lifetime ago, another pair of lovers, maybe these two not doomed. But I knew how this story ended, with one broken face and two broken hearts.

I tried to open the door, but the wind kept pushing against me, trying to keep me inside, physical manifestations of my deepest fears. I gritted my teeth and used my shoulder to throw my bodyweight against the door. The wind had stopped, so the door flew open like the little wooden panels of a cuckoo clock on the hour. _How appropriate_, I thought as I peeped out the door like one of those frail, stuffed birds. When the darkness claimed me, how different would I be from those shells of living things stuffed with sawdust, fitted with glass eyes, paraded out hour after hour, a foreign voice pretending to be theirs? Who knows what songs the birds used to sing? They were now fixed to a plank, forced to say only one sound again and again until the end of time, _cuckoo, cuckoo_. _Little bird, little bird_, I couldn't help hearing in my head, _in the cinnamon tree_.

Jasper was waiting, leaning against the wall in that sheepskin jacket, his hair tumbling into his eyes. He'd brought his guitar with him. His face looked better—bruises still dotted his face, but they'd faded to that sickly yellow and in a few days probably would fade completely. But it wouldn't matter. Whenever I looked at him now, I'd always see the black eye, the cut lip, the work of my hands. My mother's hands.

"Baby, what happened to you?" he asked, reaching a hand up to my scratched cheek but pulling back at the last minute. My skin vibrated in anticipation of his touch, but my heart sank when he snatched his hand away as if I were an open flame.

The truth, or another lie? What had he said? _No more masks_. "M-my mom. She had a bad day yesterday," I said, my eyes downcast.

"Oh, Alice, I'm so sorry." And he reached his hand up again and hovered over my cheek, never touching, but the heat from his hand still warmed my face. I wanted to grab his hand and hold it against my mouth, cover it with kisses in apology. Instead, I stood still and let his hand graze along my aura, my face an untouchable asymptote.

I laughed bitterly. "We make quite a pair, huh?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just look at us: battered by the people who are supposed to love us. It's pathetic."

Jasper's mouth formed a hard line. "That's one way to look at it."

"What's another way?" I asked, unable to make eye contact and gazing past his shoulder.

"Not everything is connected," he shrugged. "Not everything is a sign. But I think we can understand each other better than anyone else in this world."

"How? How can you possibly understand me, aside from a clinical way?" I pressed myself against the wall, willing myself to disappear. "How can you see me other than the crazy daughter of a crazy patient of yours?"

Jasper sighed. "Alice, you are _not_ crazy."

I looked at him with dead eyes, laughed sharply, and started to walk away.

"Wait, Alice, please wait."

I stopped, but I did not turn around. I could hear Jasper's shoes scraping against the sidewalk to catch up with me. This time he laid a hand timidly on my shoulder. He was touching me. I was worried about getting lost in my head and striking him again, but instead all I felt was a quiet heaviness in my heart, a still, dead calm.

"Alice, what happened the other night was my fault."

I spun around. "No, Jasper. You have to let me own this. If it's your fault I hurt you … then it's my fault everyone … hurt me."

"You know that's not the same. It was self-defense. I pushed you; I betrayed you."

"It doesn't excuse what I did to you."

"No, Alice, it doesn't excuse what _I_ did to _you_. You were scared. We … shared something so intimate, and I hadn't been honest with you, and, shit, I mean, we should have talked about it first. I should have made sure you were really okay. Fuck it all, I _knew_ everything you'd been through, and I … acted hastily. I should have stopped what was happening, but I was a selfish bastard, and you have every right to hate me."

He really didn't get it. He thought it was about the sex, and … I almost had to laugh at how simply he saw it.

"I'm not upset with you, Jasper," I said, hanging my head down. "The … what we … shared, it was beautiful, and I don't regret it. I don't. Maybe I thought I was more ready than I was, but I wanted it, and I wanted you, and I wouldn't change that moment for anything. It was perfect. But it's me. I ruin everything. I ruin lives. I ruin everything I touch. I am poison."

"Hey, hey, baby," Jasper said, taking his hand and cupping it under my chin, gently easing my head up. "What have you ruined? What have you done? I'm here. I love you. I still love you. Nothing's changed for me."

I wanted to believe him so much. I knew he believed it, but he still didn't know what he was in for.

"Walk me home?" I asked timidly.

He smiled wide, but I noticed he winced a little at the cut on his lip, still not entirely healed. The guilt weighed on me like a yoke as I slid my hand into his.

We walked in silence back to the Convent. I studied my feet as we walked between the flat circles of light on the sidewalk cast from the streetlamps overhead. There was always a bright almond shape where the circles from the streetlamps overlapped, and I wondered if that's what my light was like when Jasper was with me, the light that my mother could no longer see.

My hand was warm in his, glad to be enveloped in his strong hand, his calloused fingers wonderfully familiar against my skin. But my hand felt oddly disconnected from my body, like his hand was cotton wool packing that part of me away safely, my hand "wrapped up like ornaments waiting for another season."[2] I felt numb and strange and hopeless.

I heavily climbed the stairs with Jasper by my side. We held hands the whole way until I needed to dig in my bag for my keys. I undid the deadbolt and flipped on the lights, not knowing what to do next.

"What happens now?" I asked, taking my shoes off and feeling like Jasper was once again a stranger.

Jasper put his guitar case down and slipped out of his boots. He gestured to the couch. "Can we just sit? And talk?"

I nodded and sat down on one end of the couch. Jasper respectfully sat as far as he could from me. I pulled my legs up and faced him, my back leaning against the armrest. "So," I said.

"So," he replied.

"I don't regret what we did," I said again, flushing and studying my knees.

"I'm glad," he said, not moving. I guessed he was trying not to startle me.

"I just … think this isn't going to work," I said, fumbling with the hem of my shirt.

"Oh?" I dared to look up at Jasper, and he was like a statue, his face strangely devoid of expression. "Is that … I mean, should I go? Do you want me to go?"

"It's not about what I want," I said, "but about what's best for you."

"I think I can take care of myself."

"I know you can," I said, laying the side of my head on my knees. "It's just that I don't want you to have to take care of me too. You're too good for that. You have your life ahead of you. You are going to be a brilliant doctor, and you don't need me."

Jasper exhaled forcefully, and when he finally spoke, his voice was tinged with anger. "I don't … _need_ you? How do you know what I need? Do you have any idea how empty I've felt without you?"

"You don't know me," I said icily. "You don't know what you're getting into. I will ruin your life. You'll hate me some day. You love me now; you think you need me now. But I know. I know that I'll hold you back. You'll end up looking after me, and you'll resent me for ruining your life."

"Alice, Jesus, what are you talking about? All I want to do is be with you."

"Don't you see? You see her every day. You know what she's like, how difficult she is, how violent. Don't you see I'm just like her? I'm going to turn into that some day, and you'd best be far away from me when that happens. I'm giving you an out. I'm letting you go. I don't want to be your Zelda."

"What's wrong with Zelda? She's cool." Jasper started whistling part of the _Legend of Zelda_ theme song.

"No, Jasper, not _Legend of Zelda_," I sighed. "Zelda Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife. She … was crazy. She held him back. They were in love, and then they grew to hate each other, and she died crazy in an institution. I can't do that to you."

"I'm not like that," he said quietly, still not moving from his spot on the couch.

"You're not like what?"

"I would never resent you. Fitzgerald cared only about his career. He was selfish, and he used her. I'm not like that."

So he did know what I was talking about. "You were just fucking with me with that Nintendo shit, then?"

He shrugged. "Not fucking with you. Zelda's cool. She wrote her own novel and did some awesome paintings. I just choose to use the Nintendo as her theme song. F. Scott didn't deserve her," he added.

"Yeah, he didn't," I said, my face falling. He believed me now.

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean, he didn't appreciate her. She didn't have to end up that way."

"How do you know? She was schizophrenic." I flinched, worried that even saying the word out loud would awaken the disorder in my body.

"That's what they say, but that was a long time ago. And besides," he said, looking me dead in the eye, "you aren't like that."

"Do you know why my mother was institutionalized in the first place?" I asked coldly. He had to know. I was going to push him away to protect him.

"I haven't read her file, if that's what you're asking," he said.

"No, that's not what I'm asking."

"Then, no, I have no idea."

"By the end of high school, I knew I wanted to pursue acting. I knew I had to go to Stagedoor Manor—this amazing training camp in New York. My mother had saved for ages for the application fee. She got money from my grandmother for groceries and stuff around the house, but she did without the extra-nice stuff so she could put a little bit away every week. But that was just for the application fee. There was no way we'd have enough for me to go, and my grandmother didn't approve of the theater. Around the house it was a bit of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy—my mom helped cover for me too. She knew it was my life, and we both knew we couldn't ask my grandmother for the money even though she had it." I realized I'd never told Jasper about my grandmother either. Well, he'd know how fucked up everything was soon enough.

"My mom was always kind of odd, knew things she shouldn't and barely used her eyes to see. When she looked at you, it was as if she were looking right through you to some other world. But she started slipping, forgetting things, talking to people that weren't there. She became terrified of strangers, worried they were coming to take me from her. I don't know where she got that idea, maybe the people she talked to in her head." I paused to see Jasper's reaction, but he was just sitting, listening, nodding. _Probably practicing his psychiatrist face_, I thought bitterly.

"And Mr. Crandall, my drama teacher, knew a little about what was going on at home—he's the one who'd encouraged me to apply to the program, and he knew money was tight for us, although he didn't know the specifics. A fund had just been established at the high school for 'summer enrichment' to a deserving student, and he had rushed to my house to let me know he'd nominated me, that there was hope, a real possibility I could go. I was at the public library, working on a paper for AP English." I shook my head. So many things could have made this go another way. But this is the way fate lined up, like stage directions in a play, black on white, printed, unchangeable.

"So Mr. Crandall showed up at the house, vibrating with energy, excitement, hope. And my mother, she didn't recognize him. She maybe wasn't seeing his face anymore. I think maybe she could read his excitement that I was going to be able to go to Stagedoor, like, she could see that energy. And it was like, it all came together; she knew that he'd come to separate us. She started screaming as soon as she opened the door and saw him. He tried to calm her down, but she just … started swinging, grabbing anything she could. She must have hit him over the head with something, a picture frame or maybe a clichéd vase. I don't know. He crumpled to the floor, and she just didn't stop. I honestly think she might have killed him if I hadn't come home then."

I remembered walking home from the library and having an uneasy stomach. I blamed the cafeteria sloppy Joes that day, but as I came closer and closer to the house, I knew. I just knew something was terribly wrong. The energy around our house was noxious, and I leaned over and vomited in the grass of the front lawn even before I heard the screaming.

"My mother was shrieking, and I ran in, thinking she was being attacked. I should have just called the police, but I wasn't thinking. I was prepared for the worst, but I didn't expect to see her with my grandmother's cane, whacking this whimpering, almost-unconscious man in our foyer.

"I remember shouting for her, asking her if she was okay, if she needed anything, and then I looked. I recognized the shirt, this man's smell, mixed in with the smell of blood and his bewilderment. Oh god, it was my teacher. What had happened? I grabbed the cane out of my mother's hand, and she broke down sobbing, holding my face and saying that no one would ever separate us. I did my best to hush her, holding her, wiping away the blood, until I realized it wasn't her blood. She was fine. It was Mr. Crandall, barely conscious, breathing raggedly.

"I ran to the wall phone and called 9-1-1, knowing that the police would be here too, but I was scared. I knew it would be a million times worse if we didn't get him help and he died. My mother went to the living room to wait, smiling and kicking her feet. She'd stopped the monster, you see. And now she thought we were all safe. She was singing something familiar: _Little one when you play / Don't you mind what you say / Let those eyes sparkle and shine / Never a tear, baby of mine_."[3] I sang softly as Jasper leaned forward to listen, but I was in my own world. I could see the scene sharply in my mind, perfectly preserved, trapped in Lucite.

"I knelt by Mr. Crandall, afraid to touch him, afraid to make things worse. He was moaning, not even in his right mind. I just rocked on my knees, saying, 'Sorry,' over and over like some sort of protective spell, wishing him to be all right. My grandmother showed up at the same time as the cops and the EMTs. I tried to explain what happened, and it was just a mess with the EMTs, and the cop shouting out questions, and my grandmother horrified that the neighbors should see the flashing lights in her driveway.

"I knew, just looking at her face, that this was the end. Some primal part of me knew before my conscious mind knew that we'd be separated forever. The monster had won, just as my mother had feared. I guess she was right all along."

Jasper reached his hand out for mine, but pulled it back as he had at the pub. He was checking himself—or maybe he was afraid of me now, as he should have been all along.

"Then what happened?" he whispered.

"Then? My mom was arrested and underwent a psych evaluation. She was locked up in a hospital for three days because she was considered a threat to others. Mr. Crandall was okay, severely beaten, but he refused to press charges. He … I think he pitied me. They couldn't hold my mom long after that, but my grandmother had already decided she was too volatile to have around the house, a danger to me, not to mention a bad influence, and, worst of all, she was an embarrassment to her good name. And that was that," I said, feeling like a hollowed out-pumpkin ready to be carved with a falsely cheerful face.

"Oh, Alice, honey, that's so awful," Jasper began, but I held out my hands to stop him.

"Don't you see? I'm not looking for your sympathy. I'm telling you that you need to get away from me, because, _god_, can't you see it? Can't you see that we're the same? Didn't some parts of that story sound eerily familiar? I … I don't even remember doing that to you." I reached my fingertip out tentatively to touch his lip where I'd split it. He leaned forward to meet me halfway. I intended just to touch it as if it were a holy object, like venerating the cross on Good Friday. My finger trembled as I brought it to his lip, and he kissed my fingertip softly.

"No," I said, my eyes welling with tears, "you're not allowed to comfort me. I am a monster. I did this to you. It was because of me that Mr. Crandall even came to the house. Maybe my mom would have been okay. Everything bad, everything, is somehow my fault. You can draw the lines, and they all lead back to me."

Jasper scooted forward and grabbed my hands softly. "Then you must be quite powerful, to have that kind of control."

"I have no power. I just make bad things happen just by being me. I'm a mistake. I never should have been born," I said, unsure where he was going with this.

"Sometimes bad stuff happens. Your mother, well, if not your drama teacher, something would have happened. She's a wonderful woman, and I adore her, but she is sick."

I hung my head. If she was sick, so was I.

"But you're not like her," he said.

"How do you know?" I whispered, teetering on the edge of hoping again, waiting for the governor's stay of execution.

"Alice, you have suffered. Your trust has been shattered—you were fucking _attacked_, humiliated in front of the entire student body, for chrissakes, persecuted in school, and you deal constantly with the specter of your mother's illness. Don't you think you might be suffering a little post-traumatic stress disorder?"

"That's too easy," I said. "And I deserved those things that happened to me, because it was my love of theater that made it all happen. I was selfish. I did what I thought would make me happy, and everyone around me was destroyed."

"Alice, as sure as I know my own name, I know you're not … like your mom. Not like that. You're like her in your ability to love and to create beauty, but you are _not_ your mother." He inched closer to me on the couch.

"What if you're wrong?" I asked, two fat tears dropping out of my eyes, falling through the air in slow motion, and splashing on the fabric of the couch.

"Then I will love you the best I can, and keep you safe in my heart."

Oh, his sweet lies. I knew I should keep pushing him away, but I was too weak, too selfish again to do what I knew was good _for him_, choosing instead to do what _I_ wanted, no matter what the consequences.

My eye drifted to the large black case on the floor. "Why the guitar?" I asked.

"Oh," said Jasper sheepishly. "I was hoping you'd let me play you a song."

It had been too long. "Please," I said, wondering what he'd pick this time.

He knelt on the floor and flipped open the latches on the guitar case. The smell of the polished wood and the chemical scent from the fuzzy insulating stuff inside the case soon filled the living room. He played the open strings, adjusting the tuning slightly, and he began to sing:

_  
I'm not perfect, no I'm not  
I'm not perfect  
But I've got what I got  
I do my very best, I do my very best  
I do my very best each day  
But I'm not perfect  
And I hope you like me that way_

_You're not perfect, no you're not  
You're not perfect  
But you've got what you've got  
You do your very best, you do your very best  
You do your very best each day  
But you're not perfect  
And you know  
I love you that way _[4]

"I do, you know," he said as he finished the sweet little song.

"You do what?" I asked, my brain slow and blanketed in his singing voice.

"I love you that way. And every way. I love you." He put his guitar back in its case on the floor, leaving the lid up like an open casket.

He sat back down on the couch, one sofa cushion away from me, still keeping a respectful distance. I left my hand on the sofa cushion between us, palm up, fingers curled slightly, hoping he'd take my hand.

He slipped his hand in mine, and I started to doze off with the lights on, our hands resting like wedding rings on a satin pillow, as he continued to sing the little song. I was vaguely aware that he was carrying me to my bed, pulling off my socks, tucking me in. He kissed me on the forehead, and I snaked my arms around his neck. "I do love you, Jasper, no matter what I do," I said, half-asleep.

"I know," he smirked.

"Cocky bastard," I muttered as he shut the door to my room to give me privacy. I heard him noodling around on the guitar as I drifted asleep, my bed empty but somehow now filled with ringing strings and gently-picked melodies.

* * *

[1] Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's Daughter," _Mosses from an Old Manse_ (1844).

[2] Dar Williams, "Mortal City," _Mortal City _(1996).

[3] Frank Churchill and Lance Husher, "Baby Mine," _Dumbo_ (Walt Disney, 1941).

[4] Laurie Berkner, "I'm Not Perfect," _Victor Vito_ (2001).

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A/N: Who knew so many of you believed in fairies? **

**Thanks for the love, as always. Reviews get a delightful excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal. I still need to catch up on the last chapter reviews, so sorry if you are still waiting for an excerpt.**


	21. I'm Your Moon

**A/N: Sorry for the long delay in updating. "Sleepers, Awake" continues to eat at my brain, and then I was traveling for a while, and then I broke my leg. Most of this chapter was written under the influence of painkillers, so if stuff doesn't make sense, that's why. Blame Byron.**

**Love to Ravelbitches, and OMG SHOUTOUT to AngstGoddess003, who completely made me crap my pants when she told me she actually reads this story. Holy fuck. Hi!**

**Disclaimer: Do not taunt Stephenie Meyer.**

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Chapter 21: I'm Your Moon**

_Let them think what they like, we're fine  
I will always be right here next to you_

_- Jonathan Coulton_ [1]

_I glance over at Jasper in the front seat of Fitzsie's car. Is he merely a trick of the light? I reach a hand over to touch his shoulder to make sure he is real. He catches my hand as I reach and brushes his lips across my fingertips. If this is a delusion, maybe being crazy isn't so bad after all. _

_I drive on autopilot, not even needing to look at signs or exits—it's like this path is part of my biological instinct. It's as natural and automatic as breathing or walking. It's a trip I've made so often before, but always alone. It is strange to make this drive in the daylight, and I keep thinking, seeing Jasper in the corner of my eye, that he is made up of particles of light. He can't be real. And yet, his lips on my fingertips are warm and soft and forgiving._

***

I woke up to the smell of eggs and bacon and to strains of music, muffled nylon strings under the calloused fingers I craved. He was still here. He hadn't snuck out in the night. I hadn't dreamed the encounter.

The floor was freezing under my bare feet, but I crept out of my room without socks. Breakfast was already on the table, and Jasper sat, waiting, playing "Here Comes the Sun" as soon as he heard me open the bedroom door. "Hi," I said shyly. "You didn't have to do that," I said, motioning toward the table.

"I wanted to prove I was competent at some domestic shit. I'm really sorry about that dishcloth. I know it must physically pain you to look at it."

He was right, of course, but it pained me for reasons other than its complete lack of resemblance to a dishcloth.

"You already made awesome barbecue," I reminded him, remembering our wonderful and nearly perfect night at his house. _His house_. Would I be able to step foot in there without losing myself again or wanting to die of shame?

He smiled and kept playing, humming to himself. I sat next to him on the couch, leaning against his shoulder, appreciating his Jasper scent. "You smell like _home_ to me," I said, burying my nose against his shirt. "Not my house, but _home_, my heart's home."

He didn't say anything, but he curled his mouth into a private smile, never stopping his playing.

I gulped, deciding to open the floor to the Big Conversation again. "So," I said.

"Yes?" He continued to let his fingers play on the strings.

"So what happens now?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know we can't go back to what we were," I said, shaking my head and rubbing sleep out of my eyes.

"You're right. We can't," he said.

***

_I drive through this practiced path, so familiar, yet every second of it different and new with Jasper next to me. It reminds me of the day he first came to my apartment, when his smile and touch swathed everything in bright bursts of color. He is transforming my sad, weekly pilgrimage into something else, something that doesn't emphasize my shame and my solitude. No. Now it is something I am doing with a partner, a companion, the man who sees me as I am and still loves me._

***

I was crushed. I should have been prepared for him not to want anything to do with me, but his notes and his letters, and, fuck, his presence here had led me to believe we could work things out. "Okay, so … I mean, I don't regret anything." I was ready to set him free, now that he seemed to forgive me for what I'd done to him. _Goodbye, Jasper. Thank you for making me believe in hope again_.

Jasper interrupted me. "We can't go back to what we were, but we can be something different, something better, something stronger. Because now we know; now our eyes are opened. And I still want you. I've always wanted you, even before I knew there was a you. I felt it, this emptiness." He stopped playing for a moment and brought my hand up to his heart. "I was always looking for … _something_, you know? I felt like part of me was missing. I mean, life has always been pretty easy for me, and my family is great, and I've always had good friends. And girls, it's always been fairly uncomplicated."

I ignored his comment about the girls who'd come before me, because of course he would have had girls, as many as he wanted. Instead, I relished the pressure of his hand pressing mine to his chest, remembering how beautiful and smooth his skin was under his shirt. His heart beat a secret message against my palm.

"But that's all it was," he continued. "Just _easy_. Safe. Boring, even. I wasn't complaining, and I knew I was lucky. But when I saw you, I realized that I'd never really been _alive_. It was all just a preview of what my life could be. Everything else was just practice."

Sweet words. Too sweet. "How can you want me that way after everything you know?"

Jasper sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. "Don't you see? It's not that I love you _despite_ those things. I love you _because_ of everything that made you into the person you are. You're so strong, Alice. You have no idea. To have gone on this long with no support, all alone, to have seen what you've seen, to have lived what you've lived … there is no one else on earth like you. You did more than survive. You thrived. You bloomed. You transcended."

"Pedestals," I said, shaking my head.

"No," he said firmly. "I can see your light. It's beyond your corporeal body. It's in you and around you. I see you clearly."

I looked at my hands. They seemed ordinary to me, not glowing or special or any of the things he was saying. "How can that be, when inside all I feel is darkness and fear?"

"Come to the table, and let's have breakfast," he said, leaning his guitar against the couch and leading me to the table with an arm around my waist.

***

_We eventually make small talk. It feels awkward. This is the most private, most dear and most painful part of my life, and here he is, smack in the middle of it. I talk about the traffic on I-90. "It's never like this on Monday nights," I say._

"_There's a lot of lunchtime traffic," he says. "You get used to it."_

_I still can't believe we've both driven along these roads in parallel lives, in parallel times, never running into each other. Of course we've never run into each other. I set aside Monday nights for Mom, and Jasper always had seminars or grading or office hours or something. Funny how it worked out that way. I wonder how long we've been living these separate but parallel lives. Maybe we would have met even if he hadn't been at the Unicorn on New Year's Eve. I kind of like thinking of that, that it wasn't just this chance encounter—no, we were slowly being drawn together, pulled toward each other like magnets, even if we did not know. If it didn't happen New Year's Eve, it would have happened another time, maybe. And if not in this lifetime, maybe another. We would have found each other eventually._

_I like to think of Fate that way, not as a definite, unchangeable path filled with missed opportunities and regrets, but a pliable, benevolent one dotted with second chances. That if something is meant to happen, it will find a way. Love will find its way to you, no matter how many times you hide your face in your hands, hoping it will not notice you, that it will just pass you by._

"_What do you think about when you drive out here?" I ask._

"_Before I met you, or after?" he answers with a question._

"_Both, I guess."_

"_Well, before I'd be thinking of the patients on the ward, hoping I wouldn't have to use force that day. I would be thinking about what I would eat during my break. Sometimes I'd think about poker games in the break room with the other orderlies. You know, mundane shit."_

"_And after … you knew?" I don't finish my sentence, but I know he knows what I'm talking about._

"_I was as excited as I'd be to spend time with you, because I was going to see the woman who created you, who shaped you into this sweet, resilient, generous person I somehow was lucky enough to find. I hoped I would learn more about you by being around her. I hoped she would have a good day. I tried to think of ways I could make her more comfortable."_

"_Did you ever ask her about me?"_

"_She never stopped talking about you. It was strange. I'd known her for a while and had seen her picture, but it wasn't until I met you on New Year's that she started talking about you whenever I was there. As if she knew, somehow. As if your image in my mind triggered these memories in her. She told me stories of her beautiful Mary Alice, her dearest treasure, her greatest accomplishment."_

_I'm having trouble seeing the road as I hear his words, knowing that she remembers me when I am not there right in front of her. I thought only my physical presence could spark those memories. I feel Jasper's hand on my cheek, as light as a child's kiss, wiping away a tear as it slides down my face._

***

The eggs had already gone cold, but he'd fried half the bacon chewy and half of it crispy. "How did you know I can never decide what kind of bacon I want?" I asked.

"I didn't," he said. "But you gotta take the crispy with the chewy. It's, like, my philosophy."

"Okayyy," I said, picking up a crispy piece with my fingers. "Am I supposed to read something deep into that?"

"As much or as little as you want," he said, grinning.

"You're such an _academic_," I said, rolling my eyes and throwing the bacon at him.

It was strange sitting with him at my table, pretending as if everything were normal. I knew now that he saw me, everything in me. He'd seen my craziness, my violence, the way I ruined people's lives.

And he was still here. He knew exactly what kind of mother I had, what I could eventually become.

And he was still here. Why? Why should I be the lucky one? My mother certainly wasn't.

But I wasn't my mother. I didn't have to become her, did I? Jasper didn't believe so.

Still, it was a weird feeling knowing I didn't have to hide who I was anymore. He'd seen it all. He'd been inside me, both my body and mind, and he knew all my secrets now. _All_ of them. There was nothing left to hide.

And he was still here.

***

"_Do you want to talk about it?" Jasper asks, brushing the back of his hand against my cheek again._

_I shake my head out of instinct, but then I think about it. "It's just … hard … I mean, it's nice that she remembers me, that she thinks of me when I'm not there. It's nice to, I don't know, to matter."_

"_I get that."_

"_So why am I crying?" I ask, not taking my eyes off the road._

"_You carry so much inside you, baby, all that sorrow. It's like the mother you knew, the one who loved you and cared for you, is gone. You've written yourself a script of what she knows and what she doesn't know, and maybe it's easier for you to think she's forgotten you, that's she's so lost that she's pretty much gone, because then you don't have to hope. So when she deviates from the script, it's both wonderful and horrible because of the hope it gives. You've grieved for her, and this new information opens up the wounds again."_

_I think of all those times I've had those brushes of hope when she seems lucid, and I wonder how many of these insights Jasper has wanted to share with me since he's known. It seems silly now that I feared it so much, feared that he'd find out. He's put my feelings into tidy concepts that fit into the spaces in my head. I understand the push and pull, my desire and fear of wanting her to remember, of not wanting her to remember. I want to scab over and not feel anymore at the same time that I'm afraid of never feeling again. _

_I am both those things all the time, like Janus, looking forward and backward, like a Tarot card in position or reversed. Two sides of a coin._

***

Jasper refilled my juice and looked at me quizzically. "What are you thinking about, sweet Alice?"

"I'm thinking about Pluto," I said.

"The dog?"

"No, the planet. Or what used to be a planet. It was always a planet when I was in school," I said, looking down at the congealed eggs on my plate. "And now, now it's nothing. They looked closely enough and finally saw Pluto truly, not special, not worthy of being included."

"That's silly."

"Don't make fun of me," I mumbled, not looking him in the eye.

"I'm not making fun of you." He paused, drumming his fingers on the table. "Labels don't define us," he said, chewing thoughtfully on a strip of bacon. "Pluto didn't change just because of how a bunch of scientists decided to see it. Pluto was always Pluto; it was our shortcomings that prevented us for seeing Pluto for what it was."

"Or maybe," I countered, "scientists thought Pluto was special until they could see Pluto for what it really was, less than whole."

"But, Alice, I've known who you were. And it doesn't change how I feel about you." He was deep in thought, but then his eyes lit up. He got up from the table and fetched his guitar again.

"There's a song about Pluto that I want to play for you," he said. I folded my hands in my lap and waited for him to continue.

He began to sing:

"_They invented a reason  
That's why it stings  
They don't think you matter  
Because you don't have pretty rings  
I keep telling you I don't care  
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change_

"_I'm your moon  
You're my moon  
We go round and round  
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small  
Promise me  
You will always remember who you are_." [2]

From the first words, I started tearing up. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was all that mattered. "You will always remember who you are," I repeated.

"I'm your moon," he said, laying the guitar down. "You're my moon," he said, folding me into his arms.

"Can it work that way?" I asked. "Can we be each other's moons?" I murmured against his chest.

"We orbit each other, and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks, Alice. All that matters is us. Let them think what they want."

I looked off in the distance, wondering if it was possible for the two of us to be enough, to make up the other's world.

Lost in thought, I jumped when Jasper asked me, "What are you doing today?"

I shrugged. "Nothing, really, just work tonight."

"I have to go to work," he said simply. "Why don't you come with me?"

"To Meadowview?" I whispered.

"Yeah."

What should I do? Could I handle this so soon? What was I afraid of?

"All right," I said, drinking the last of my juice. "I'll drive."

Jasper smiled and started putting the dishes away. I went to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, my feet flat on the ground, my heart pounding like mad. _I'm his moon_, I thought, and that gave me the courage to get dressed and prepare for this new phase of our lives.

***

_I start to park the car in the usual spot, but Jasper says, "No, we have to park in the employee section." Right. I guess I'll be shadowing him all day, or maybe spending most of the time with my mom. I haven't seen her in the daylight in so long. I realize I've separated her in my head. In the daylight, she is still my mother, sane and wonderful and loving. At night, she's this transformed, bewitched creature, unpredictable, angry, violent, gentle, scared. It's like she's a roulette wheel of emotion, and I'm never sure which sliver of wheel will catch the marble._

_I'm scared of seeing her this way. I'm scared of reopening these scarred-over wounds, as Jasper put it. My daylight mother is gone, but my memory of her is perfect. Now I will see her in the light._

_But maybe it's the same way Jasper now sees me, all of me. I look over at him, and he's smiling so much, practically vibrating with happiness. I imagine he must be feeling such relief at not having to hide his knowledge from me any longer._

_It's then that I realize that I, too, feel the relief of not having to hide my secret from him._

_We are on equal footing as we exit the car on the far end of the lot, farther than I have ever parked before._

_We shut our doors at the same time and smile at each other as we meet around the back of the car. I shyly take his hand._

"_Let's go inside," he says, and I think I'll be all right._

_I'm his moon._

* * *

[1] Jonathan Coulton, "I'm Your Moon," _Thing a Week IV_, 2006.

[2] Ibid. From Coulton's Wiki: "The song is written from the view of Charon, Pluto's moon. Because Charon is almost half the size of Pluto, the two do not have a traditional orbit where the small body basically moves around the center of the large body. Rather, both Pluto and Charon revolve around a point between them, like a bola or a spinning pair of skaters. In addition, the two celestial objects are tidally face-locked, meaning they keep the same 'face' towards each other ('like dancers,' according to Jonathan's blog of the song)."

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A/N: Links to the Jonathan Coulton song as well as my own "special" version of "By the Waters of Babylon" (as featured in Chapter 7: Child of the Moon) are in my profile.**

**As always, reviews get a random excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal. Thanks for the nomination at the Twilight All Human Fanfiction Awards (under Best Alice and Jasper). Voting is open now!  
http:// twilightallhumanawards(dot)webs(dot)com/voting(dot)htm**


	22. Something Good

**A/N: Hello! I haven't forgotten about you lovely people. Thanks to TLYDF for mentioning this story in their Alice character study last week. Cool beans. (I haven't said "Cool beans" since about 1988.)**

**Love to mah Rav peeps and to Twilightzoner, my fucktabulous Twi-beta.**

**Announcement: Jasper POV is here! The link is in my profile. But you can also find it at www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/5383626****.  
**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer hates me and my ass face.**

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Chapter 22: Something Good**

_Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could._

_-Rogers and Hammerstein _[1]

It was as if I were a first-time visitor here. Or a tourist. It was such a different feeling to walk through Meadowview's main entrance holding hands with someone who knew all my names, who knew the exterior me and the interior me. Seeing his familiar, wonderful body in this too-familiar, hated place made me feel as if I were dreaming, or if my eyes were faulty somehow, creating a composite image from two separate lives. But he squeezed my hand as he pressed the elevator call button and kissed the top of my head as soon as the doors slid shut.

Once we'd reached my mom's floor, I went on autopilot, reaching to ring the doorbell for the orderly to let me in. Jasper gently stopped my hand. He took his employee ID out of his pocket and swiped it, opening the door. Then he took a formidable looking set of keys out of his pocket, unlocking the inner door.

"Jasper!" the nurses at the station called out the way everyone would cheer, "Norm!" on that old sitcom "Cheers." It was clear they all knew him and that they all thought he was terrific. I could see the nurses eyeing me curiously. They weren't the same nurses I knew, since I usually visited when the night shift had already happened. I dutifully handed over my purse for them to check behind the counter.

"Hi," I said shyly. I didn't know how to be.

"Paula? Mae? _This_ is Alice," Jasper said, his face aglow. He gave my hand a little squeeze.

The two women jumped out of their seats simultaneously and peered at me over the counter. Startled, I took a step back and scooted so I was slightly behind Jasper's shoulder.

"Alice! Our Jasper is _crazy_ about you," said Paula, a woman with tired eyes but a kind smile.

Her word choice seemed sort of odd to me based on where we were, but at the same time it made me feel at ease how lightly they tossed the word around. They could call Jasper _crazy_ because he wasn't. They could say he was crazy in front me because they didn't think _I_ was crazy. I found some comfort in this. _Ah, but they can't see the real you. They don't know yet who you are_.

"He's a real sweetheart, Jasper is," said Mae, reaching out her hand to shake. I stepped forward and took it timidly. Her skin was rough, probably from endless hand-washing and the powder inside latex gloves. "You know, he is in here all the time, even when it's not his shift. He's been here almost every day the last few weeks so one of the patients can knit. Honestly, the man should get a prize."

Jasper looked at me and said softly, "I already have one."

"That's … my mom," I explained to the women, my eyes watering from knowing that Jasper had been coming here on his time off to supervise her. "Mary Louise Brandon. He … he did that for me."

"Oh, you're sweet Mary Louise's daughter?" said Paula in surprise. "I should have seen the resemblance. You have her eyes. She talks about you all the time. It's nice to meet you, finally."

"Yes," I said, with a strange feeling of pride. They knew my mother, but they didn't pity me.

Mae clucked her tongue. "Jasper, you never told us your Alice was Ms. Brandon's daughter! And now I know why you've spent every minute of your free time here, sitting with her and supervising her knitting. You're a sly one." Jasper just rubbed the back of his neck.

I was getting seriously choked up. He'd spent this time for her, without my knowing. He wasn't doing it to impress me or get in my good graces. If he hadn't slipped and called me by my secret name that night, I never would have known about any of this. He did it just because … I didn't know. Maybe he wanted her to be happy. Maybe he thought that her happiness would rub off on me.

"Oh, let me get the knitting supplies." Paula opened a metal cabinet and took out a small grocery sack, handing the crinkly plastic bag over to him.

"Thanks," he said. "Come on, Alice," said Jasper, tugging at my sleeve. "I'm sure you want to see her."

I hesitated a moment. I was afraid of seeing her not in the moonlight. I would be losing forever the memories of my mother in the sun, sane, lovely, _my true mother_. My hand trembled as I took his arm. I leaned against him a little as we walked to her room.

He unlocked the door and opened it just a crack, knocking lightly. He didn't have to knock. I knew the policy; the nurses and other orderlies just swung open the doors on their checks. But I felt he was trying to treat her with dignity, not as an inpatient in a mental hospital. "Ms. Brandon?" he called politely.

"Is that you, Custer?" I heard my mom say in a scratchy voice. "Do you have my yarn? And is it that same shitty acrylic?"

Jasper shrugged at me. "I don't know anything about yarn," he whispered. "Where do you get the good stuff?"

"At the yarn store," I said.

"Goddammit," he muttered, and smacked himself in the forehead. "So simple."

"Sometimes life is," I said, holding onto his hand tightly as he pushed open the door all the way.

My mother sat in a baggy sweatshirt and stained jogging pants. Her fingers were twiddling, making invisible patterns in the air. I could see they were itching to knit.

She looked at Jasper and then gasped when she saw me behind him. "Why … why is _she_ here?"

"She wanted to come," said Jasper, holding on more tightly to my hand.

"So you can see her too?" she asked.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

"Mary Alice!" she cheered, clapping her hands. "Your light is back." She was squinting now. "You're like the sun."

She was so beautiful sitting there, even in her stained, unflattering clothing, as rays of light filtered through the heavily screened windows, turning her hair to gold.

"_You're_ the sun, Mom," I said, walking forward to give her a hug. "Mom, _this_ is Jasper. He is my light."

"Custer? Custer is your light?"

I sat down next to Mom on the bed. "I guess he is. He was this whole time, and I never really knew."

My mother reached her hand for my face, and I flinched, remembering the last time I'd been here. I hated that I flinched. But she only traced the air around my cheek and said, "There it is. You're glowing, Mary Alice. Custer makes you radiant."

Jasper cleared his throat. "Ms. Brandon? Would you like to knit?"

She giggled. "Ms. Brandon? That's my mommy. I'm Weezy."

I sighed, cheeks flushing immediately, but Jasper's eyes were full of sorrow and infinite patience.

"Do you want your knitting?" Jasper asked, slipping into an easy smile.

My mom clapped her hands. "I love knitting."

Jasper walked over and placed the wooden needles in her hands. She had a little project started on one of them, in the same acrylic yarn. "This yarn is shit," she said, immediately clapping her hands over her mouth. The empty wooden needle clattered on the linoleum, while the one holding her work in progress was muffled by the yarn. "Don't tell my mommy I used a bad word."

"Your secret is safe with me, Weezy," said Jasper gently, picking up her knitting and placing it back in her hands.

"Did you finish your sweater, Custer?" she asked, beginning to knit clumsily with fingers swollen from meds and disuse.

"It was just a dishcloth," Jasper admitted, looking at me sheepishly.

"It was wonderful," I broke in. "Did you teach him, Mom?"

My mother dropped her knitting again and clasped her head in her hands, looking back and forth at Jasper and me in bewilderment. "I don't know who I am," she said finally, in a small, scared voice.

"Maybe this was a bad idea," I whispered to Jasper, my vision blurred with tears.

Jasper kissed the top of my head as he had in the elevator. "I'm sorry. It might be too much. I just got excited. I wanted all of us to be together."

"I know, I know," I said, as my eyes reached their saturation point, the tears sliding down my face as I blinked. "I wanted this too. So much. You have no idea."

I turned to my mom. "Would you like to knit now?" I asked gently, picking up her knitting again.

"This is mine. My knitting," she said, greedily snatching the yarn from my hands. She hunched over the needles and yarn like a wild animal, turning her body away to hide it from me.

"I'll, uh, I'll go outside for a bit," I said to Jasper.

He tried to stop me. "Why are you leaving?"

"Mom wants to knit, and I think having both of us here together confuses her. I'm not qualified to supervise her. I want her to have this time. She needs this time with you. I'm … I'm usually not here anyway. She knows you better now." I wiped the tears away with the heel of my hand.

"She's _your_ mother," Jasper said. "You should spend time with her if you want. Who am I? I'm a stranger."

"No," I said firmly. "She is my mother, and she needs this time, this gift that only you can give. So please, please, I ask you to give her this gift. I'll be okay."

He let me out of the room, looking pained and maybe a little regretful.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm so happy you gave her this time back."

I sat in one of the little lounge areas while I waited. I could hear talking and occasional laughter coming from the room. I tried to make out words, but mostly it was like a tonal poem, soft and soothing, murmured by the two voices that meant the most to me in all the world.

Cocooned in the only voices that ever meant _home_ to me, I fell asleep. I didn't mean to, but it had been such a hard couple days. I dreamed I was watching Jasper and my mom in the next room. The two of them were knitting, wearing Fitzsie's hats and sipping tea.

"You've got to dip the yarn in the tea three times," my mother said, young and beautiful as she was in my youth.

"Three times," repeated Jasper. "One, two, three," he counted out slowly.

"No, you're twisting the stitches," my mom scolded. "Like this." She walked over and held his hands. Watching them, I suddenly remembered the feel of her hand on mine when I was learning cursive, her delicate hand guiding mine.

I thought I was invisible in the room, but she suddenly looked directly at me. "Darling Mary Alice, you've got to go home. I'm home. Find me."

Jasper kept knitting and dunking his yarn in his tea.

"Take him with you," she said to me, standing up and putting her hand on Jasper's shoulder. "Home, Mary Alice. Under the floor. Go _now_!"

Another patient's door slamming woke me up. I checked my face carefully for drool. What a strange dream—yarn—and tea—and … something about going home? I could still hear Jasper and my mother's muffled conversation down the hall. I checked my watch. Almost an hour had gone by.

I stretched as tall as I could, reminded of my kindergarten class when we sang a song about the moon and stars, about standing on my tippytoes and reaching for the skies. I wiggled my fingers, but I couldn't remember the melody. I walked toward my mom's room and knocked.

Jasper looked through the window and opened the door immediately. "Hey, love," he said. "Sorry it's been so long."

"No, it was nice hearing you two together," I said, reaching around his neck and pulling him down so I could kiss him on the nose. "Maybe we can try this again. Maybe it'll be easier this time." I stepped into the room as if it were a minefield, each step an unknown. Would I set her off? Would she know who I was?

"Custer has fingers like Vienna sausages," said my mother, clucking her tongue. "I'm trying to teach him how to purl. His hands are naughty."

I blushed, remembering his naughty hands. "Be nice, Mom. He's just learning. Do you remember when you were teaching me?"

"Mary Alice! Where have you been? I thought you were lost!" she said, looking at her knitting as if she weren't sure how it got into her hands.

"I was just outside, Mom," I said, looking over to Jasper, unsure of what to do.

"Don't scare me like that again, baby girl," she said. She brushed her hand lightly on top of mine, like the flutter of an eyelash. "Do you remember when you were learning cursive?"

"I do." I got a chill, remembering that I'd just been dreaming about it.

"You gave me such trouble about the Q."

"Well, why does it look like a giant number '2'? It makes no sense!" It still frustrated me.

My mom laughed. "A lot of things don't make sense. But you can purl, right?"

"You taught me that, too."

"When I purl, baby girl, I imagine I'm knitting for you."

I crinkled my forehead, trying to understand what she was saying. "Do you mean you are knitting things for me?"

"No, I mean … I mean it's like I'm standing in front of you, holding my knitting so you can see it. And it's my hands that are doing the knit stitch backwards, so it faces you. I purl so you won't have to knit." She was looking past my head now and talking to the wall behind me.

I wasn't quite sure I understood, but I felt like it was important. "Then when I purl, I will purl so you don't have to knit," I said.

"No!" she snapped. "Don't do that. Don't do that for me. Not for me." She began to bang her fists on the wall behind her bed. She started to cry. "No, not for me. Don't ever do that."

"Jasper?" I asked, scared.

Jasper walked over calmly and took my mom in his arms. "Hush," he said. "It's okay. You just want to keep her safe, right?"

My mom calmed down instantly and nodded her head against his chest. "She can't do that for me. I won't let her." She sobbed against his chest while I looked on, on the verge of sobbing myself.

"You're going to be fine, Ms. Brandon. And I'll take good care of Mary Alice. She is safe with me."

"Safe," repeated my mom hollowly.

I felt like I didn't belong here, that this somehow was a private moment between Jasper and my mom. But then she looked right up at me.

"Olympia," she said. "Did you get my message?"

"I … what?" I looked at Jasper, who just shrugged as best he could while holding my mom. "I'm Mary Alice, Mom."

"I know that," she said, pushing Jasper away. "You got my message. Olympia," she said again.

All of a sudden I felt the buzzing return. I'd never felt it here, at Meadowview, with my mother. I began to panic. "Jasper?" I asked again, reaching blindly for him. I felt his arms around me, and he stopped me from being lost completely while the rest of the room melted away. He was my anchor.

I was overwhelmed with the smell of cookies baking, my mother's singing, sitting at the table and drinking cocoa while my slippered feet swung back and forth, dangling from the kitchen chair. I saw our house like a movie in fast-forward, spinning in the living room until I fell down laughing, coming home to the chaos after Mr. Crandall's attack, receiving people in black after my grandmother died, trying to live in the house with my mother for that short time. And finally, packing up the furniture in the house, selling it, saving some of it, throwing a lot of things away. And then, finally, the house, empty, the shell of my childhood. Shutting the front door for the last time, keys in my hand to give to the realtor. Alone.

"Alice! Alice! Are you all right?" I could hear a voice calling me from far away, and I felt safe and warm, even if I couldn't see.

"I'm here," I said, my voice creaky, barely working. I struggled to open my heavy eyes.

The room was bright, so bright, and my mother was glowing again, the sun lighting her from behind.

"Alice?" Jasper asked, his arms still around me.

"I'm here," I repeated, my voice stronger now, clear. I looked to my mother and said, "Olympia. I understand."

My mother clapped her hands and found her knitting again. She was humming something. It was familiar, reminding me of being small, of lying in bed next to my mom while she sung me to sleep.

"_Perhaps I had a wicked childhood / Perhaps I had a miserable youth /But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past / There must have been a moment of truth_ …"[2] She trailed off. "I don't remember the rest," she mumbled to her hands.

I knew this. What was it?

To my surprise, Jasper started to sing softly, looking directly at me, "_For here you are, standing there, loving me, whether or not you should_."[3]

"That's it!" said my mother, and I listened to the two people who made up my past and my future singing together, singing to me. I wanted to curl up at their feet and fall asleep again, cozy and safe.

I finally recognized the tune from _The Sound of Music_. We always watched that film together when it was on TV, which was about once a year, usually around Easter. I let my voices join theirs, the three of us singing in unison, one love, one heart: "_So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good_."[4]

I didn't know what all of it meant exactly, but our voices twisted around each other, the same words and melody but different souls, like strands of worsted yarn. We were bound together now, somehow. Maybe we always had been, and it had taken us this long to realize it.

Jasper soon had to leave to do his actual job, taking the knitting with him. I sat with my mom for the longest I had since she'd been brought here. I helped her eat. I read her story after story from a large collection of fairy tales from the unit's library, a rather strange choice to me, but my mother had insisted. I read until my voice cracked, dry and spent.

When I could speak in no more than a hoarse whisper, I put the book down. "I'm sorry, Mom, but my voice is too tired."

She just stared past me again. She had disappeared inside herself. I knew that look in her eye. I sat with her by the bed, leaning on her shoulder, maybe for hours.

Jasper knocked softly on the door. "I know you have to get to work soon," he said, ducking his head in. "I'm just about done here—just have to do one more round of checks."

I nodded at him, not wanting to disturb my mom.

He was back a moment later, and I stood to say goodbye. My mother didn't notice. She was in her own world, maybe thinking of princesses locked up in towers or enslaved by wicked stepmothers. "I love you, Mom," I said, giving her a hug and a kiss on her dry cheek. She did not react, which wasn't unusual. I began to walk away, but she caught me by the arm.

"Find me," she said, her eyes boring into my face.

My head was filled with a million thoughts as Jasper and I walked across the parking lot to my car. "Thank you," I said. "This was a good day."

Jasper hugged me hard and twirled me in the dim light of the fading sun. "I don't know how you can be so strong," he said.

I shrugged. I didn't feel strong. He carried me the rest of the way to the car, depositing me by the front door.

As we slid into Fitzsie's car, he asked, "Did you really understand what she meant about Olympia?"

I bit my lip and nodded.

"I think she's telling me to go home, to Olympia, to our old house. And I think she wants you to go with me."

"I'll follow you to the ends of the earth," said Jasper.

I laughed lightly, my voice still a little scratchy. "Olympia's not that far away."

"Now?" he asked.

"No. But soon," I said, starting the car and driving it carefully down the long driveway, leaving my mother behind, shut up in her room, a princess in a tower.

Jasper's hand found mine resting on the emergency brake. As he wound our fingers together, I thought again of the three of us singing together, three souls, but one family. And even though my mother wasn't with us, I could feel her fingers against mine. I could still hear our voices twining together, braiding like a princess's hair hung out a tower window, a surprise escape from a lifetime of imprisonment.

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[1] Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, "Something Good," _The Sound of Music_ (1959).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

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A/N: Sorry I've been so FAIL with updates. I do love you kids, truly. **

**For up-to-the-minute news and blurbs and randomness, follow me on Twitter: www(dot)twitter(dot)com/feistyybeden. **

**Reviews get eighth grade journal excerpts, as always. Sorry if I am behind on the last chapter excerpts. I kind of suck. **

**p.s. My leg is still broken.**


	23. I Can Remember Where I Come From

**A/N: Why hello, neighborinos! Sorry this is late, as usual. There are only a few chapters left of this bad boy—can you believe it?**

**Please check out Jasper's POV in "Charmed Life," in my profile.**

**Thanks to the lovely Unicorn ladies, and all my Twitter peeps (follow me: feistyybeden). Hugs to my Twi-beta, Twilightzoner.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight, and an array of other things as well. I own my broken leg. Rock on.**

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Chapter 23: I Can Remember Where I Come From**

_We told you all of our secrets  
All but one  
- Tori Amos [1]_

"Are you serious? You need to pee already?" I asked, shaking my head.

Jasper nodded. "I need to pee, like, whoa."

"Dude, I told you to go before we left the house. And not to get that fucking Big Gulp!"

"I'll make it worth your while," he said, giving me a sly look out of the corner of his eye.

"This car doesn't need a new fake pine air freshener, if that's what you're thinking," I said. I sounded crabby, but it was really just nerves making me irritable. "Fine," I sighed. "I'll fill the car up while you … do your business. Then no more stops until we get there." I wagged my finger at him a little.

He caught my finger with his hand and planted a little kiss on my fingertip. "Thank you, ma'am."

I muttered darkly about Big Gulps and average bladder sizes of Texans while Jasper chuckled at me. "You're not really upset, butterbean," he said gently.

"No. I just want to barf," I admitted, clenching the wheel more tightly in my hands.

"Yeah, I know. It's going to be okay," he said, patting my leg. I was wearing knee-high boots with a short skirt, and he inched his hand underneath the fabric, resting it on my knee. My eyes started to cross a little as he rubbed his thumb back and forth on my bare skin.

"I'm going to drive into a tree if you keep that up," I said.

He smiled, showing all his teeth, threw his head back, and launched into an obnoxiously loud rendition of the "George of the Jungle" theme song. "_Watch out for that tree!_"

"You're on thin ice, buddy," I warned, but I was laughing. I was so glad he was here to distract me. I would surely have lost my nerve and turned back around toward Seattle by now had I been by myself.

It had taken us a few weeks to find the time that we both could get away. In the end, we settled on Jasper's spring break. It gave Rosalie plenty of time to make sure my shifts were covered for the few days we'd be gone. We would go to Olympia, stop by my old house, maybe stay a night or two. I had no idea what we were going to find or how long it would take—or if we would find anything at all. Maybe it was just a wild goose chase. Still, my mother had been adamant, and I'd had the dream, and … well, I knew she was serious. I hoped she was right about … whatever it was.

Once we'd decided on the trip, time seemed both to drag and to run in fast-forward. I couldn't wait to go, to find my mother, whatever _that_ meant, but I also dreaded returning home. Even thinking of Olympia as "home" made me feel panicky, trapped. I hadn't been back since I moved to Seattle. And the last time I went back, it was only for a short time after my grandmother died, when I thought I'd be able to take my mom home, take care of her myself. It had taken only a few weeks to realize I was sadly ill equipped to take on such a huge task. I sold the house so I could pay for her stay in Meadowview. My grandmother had also left me a sizeable chunk of money, made through a lifetime of scrimping and a large payout from my grandfather's life insurance policy.

The truth was, I didn't even need to work at the Unicorn or live in my small apartment, but that would mean keeping my mom in a lesser facility. I'd rather live a monastic life and know she was well taken care of. It's not like I needed _things_ anyway. And what would I do all day on my own? I liked the distraction. I _needed_ the distraction.

That was all before Jasper, of course. Now, well, now I didn't know. I could easily spend the whole day with him, maybe my whole life. At least, at least … until I lost my mind, and then I would slip away. I would feel when it was going to happen, and I would sneak away from him under cover of darkness. I wouldn't let him suffer. I wouldn't make him take care of me. He said he didn't think I was like my mom, not like that, but what did he know? And I knew, deep down, that he'd take care of me no matter what, but I couldn't burden him that way. He needed to live his life. He needed to be happy. I wouldn't hold him back.

The gas pump clicked in my hand, the tank of Fitzsie's car filled to the brim. I replaced the gas cap and drummed my fingers on the roof of her car. Jasper was taking his sweet time in the restroom. A car honked behind me, wanting the pump, so I got in the car and pulled into a space by the minimart. I was still fidgety, irrationally upset with Jasper for taking so long. Why was I so impatient to go back to the place where I lost my innocence, my trust in humanity?

I nearly started leaning on the horn of the old Chrysler when I saw Jasper emerge from the minimart with a few plastic grocery sacks looped over his arms. He was wearing a trucker hat charmingly emblazoned with "I'm Kind of a Big Deal." The price tag was still hanging down near his eye, fluttering in the breeze, spinning like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat on a wire. "Are you trying to be transgender Minnie Pearl?" I asked as he slid into the car.

"I had to get it. It screams class. Shrieks it, even."

"Class. Right," I said, starting the car again. "So what's in the bags? You said you'd make this stop worth my while. Where's my sugar, sugar?"

He took an identical trucker hat out of one of the sacks and put it on my head backwards. "I got one for Fitzsie too. We can be like Mouseketeers. Truckerteers!"

"Well, okay then," I said, inching away from him on the vinyl of the seat, pretending to be frightened of his oddness. He leaned over to try to kiss me, but the stiff brim of his hat bonked me in the forehead. I ripped the hat off his head and tossed it in the backseat.

"Hey! I was wearing that!" he protested.

I took mine off and tossed it in the backseat as well.

"Hey! You were wearing that!" he protested again.

I put my hand on the back of his neck and tugged him toward me, kissing him hard. "I love you, Jasper Whitlock, but those are the fugliest hats I've ever seen," I murmured against his mouth as he tangled his fingers in my hair.

"_Yeah_ they are!" he said, super excited, his voice a bit too loud for the enclosed space of the Fitzsiemobile. I laughed and whacked him across the chest as I pulled out of the space and made our way back to the highway.

Once I got back on I-5, Jasper started presenting me with more things out of the bags. He'd gotten several tennis ball cans of Pringles, a handful of Slim Jims, and a package of Nutter Butters.

"You _do_ realize that this is, like, a one-hour drive, right?" I asked.

"I _know_," he said, pouting a little and slumping back into his seat. "I just … I like road trips. I used to go on a ton of them with my family. It's been a while. Can I feed you Pringles?"

"Fine," I said. I narrowed my eyes. "You didn't really need to pee, did you?"

"No," he admitted. "I just wanted Pringles."

"Well, why couldn't you have bought them in Seattle before we left? You know, when you insisted it was 'imperative' that we stop to get you a Big Gulp before leaving the city limits? I bet you're not even hypoglycemic."

"They don't taste as good if they're not from a rest stop minimart," he insisted. "Everyone knows _that_."

I was about to say something back, but when I opened my mouth, he put a Pringle in it.

Then I tried to say, "You're a jackass," but he stuffed another Pringle in my mouth. When I opened my mouth to say, "Stop shoving Pringles in my mouth," he crammed another one in. At that point I was shaking so hard from laughter that I was afraid I'd swerve right off the highway. I knew he was doing his best to distract me from what awaited me at the other side of this journey, and I was grateful.

_That's a special kind of love_, I thought. Then I thought, _He's right; these Pringles are awesome_.

He could tell I was calmer, so he stopped force-feeding me Pringles when I tried to speak.

"Thank you for coming with me," I said.

"Thank you for asking me," he said. He was twisting his body around strangely. I thought maybe he was going to try to wrap his arms around me or something, but he was trying to reach the Truckerteer hats in the backseat.

"Stop it right there, mister," I said in my sternest voice. "I see what you're doing."

"What?" he asked, arm frozen in midair.

"I see you reaching for that hat, and you can forget it."

"I'm _shocked_, Alice, simply _shocked_, that you'd think such a thing."

"Am I wrong?" I asked.

"Well, no," he said, hanging his head in mock shame.

The rest of the drive involved more silliness from Jasper, several more attempts to retrieve the Truckerteer hats, and too many sweet little kisses to count.

As I drove, I thought of the last few weeks, how much my routine had changed. I saw my mom a lot more, several times a week. Whenever Jasper was going to work or just to visit to supervise her knitting, I came along too. I'd brought her my best yarns and more needles in a variety of sizes, and she seemed happy, even if she didn't recognize me all the time. Some days my mom, Jasper, and I would sit quietly in the room, all three of us knitting. Jasper was working on another garter-stitch dishcloth. My mom's hands were slowly remembering what to do. She was nowhere near as proficient as she was when we lived in our house in Olympia, but she made a nice ribbed scarf for Jasper out of some hand-dyed baby alpaca yarn.

"I'll never take it off, even to shower," he'd said solemnly as she draped it ceremoniously around his neck.

"Don't be ridiculous, Custer," she'd said, patting his cheek. "You can't wash that yarn in hot water."

Watching the two of them together was so strange, as if I were living in an alternate reality. I could understand why my mother had freaked out so much the first day she saw us at the same time. But gradually she and I both got used to the addition of Jasper to our strange mother-daughter relationship in the unnatural, antfarm-like confinement of her hospital room. He hovered over us like a guardian angel. And maybe he was just that: a guardian angel sent to help us build a new relationship together. He'd brought us joy I'd previously thought impossible to find in her small, sanitized room, and we were his treasure.

Now that Jasper knew _everything_ about me, I felt free, light, as if I'd float away for happiness. He was still here. My skin rejoiced when it made contact with his, and I'd been in danger of being late to work too many times because I couldn't bear to untangle myself from his beautiful body in my bed or his. Now that he knew all my secrets, I couldn't get enough of him, his mouth on mine, our bodies interlocking like puzzle pieces. I was _present_, wholly, even when we were naked with each other. I knew that he wouldn't—he couldn't—harm me. I never knew I could be so _happy_ and in such an uncomplicated way. There was no need to hide now. No shame, no secrets.

And now we were going home, returning to the source of my jagged, heart-rending memories, the font of all my pain. But Jasper was by my side, stuffing Pringles in my mouth and trying to retrieve an obscenely hideous hat from the backseat.

It was all going swimmingly until we passed the Olympia town limits. I was dizzy, nauseated. I had to pull over because my hands were shaking so much, my heart fluttering like a frightened bird.

"Baby, baby, it's going to be all right. You can do this," Jasper said, immediately wrapping his arms around me and rocking me against his chest, awkwardly leaning over the gearshift and parking brake.

"I can't, I can't, I can't," I kept repeating, digging my nails into his back through his t-shirt. "I'm scared."

"Hush, sweet baby," he said. "I'm here. We can do it. I won't let anything happen to you."

He watched me cry and held my hands back when they reached up to claw at my face. "Shh," he murmured, "it's going to be okay. You're safe. You're safe here with me."

"I can't," I said again.

"Do you want me to drive?" he asked, kissing the corners of my eyes as cars whizzed by us on the highway. I nodded against him.

"Chinese fire drill!" he shouted, clapping his hands, and I had to laugh. We got out of the car and switched positions, Jasper high-fiving me as we crossed paths at the back of the car.

When Jasper got into the driver's seat, his knees almost hit his face. "I forget how short you are sometimes," he said, grimacing and trying to put the seat farther back. "I'm surprised you don't have to drive with a brick tied to your foot or something."

"You're an asshole," I said, brow furrowed.

"I'm _your_ asshole," he reminded me, kissing the little wrinkle between my brows. "You'll have to give me directions. And I'd prefer if you did it in a soothing Australian accent, like on Emmett's GPS."

I thought he was joking, but when I tried to give directions in my normal voice, he pretended he didn't understand what I was saying. "I hear these words, but they just … they're missing something, perhaps something Antipodean."

I rolled my eyes and put on a fake _Crocodile Dundee_ accent. "That's not a fork in the road," I said. "Now _this_, this is. So stay right at the fork, uh, kangaroo sport."

"Yes, ma'am!"

His plan worked. We were both in stitches by the time we finally rolled in front of my old house. My Australian accent sucked pretty hard. I ended up speaking mostly normally and then throwing in menu items from Outback Steakhouse. "Turn left at the light, erm, bloomin' onion."

We were parked in front of the old house. I felt a million different versions of me flit through me like ghosts. Little me, safe and loved in my mother's arms in our shared bed. Medium-sized me, just beginning to understand how much my mother hated living here. Me, coming home from school and realizing that my life as I knew it was over, the screaming, the flashing lights of the ambulance. Me, slinking home, bruised and humiliated by the boys in drama club. I reached my hand up to my hair, wondering at the shortness of it. It felt all wrong. "Who am I?" I whispered.

"You are Alice, and Mary Alice, and my beloved," said Jasper. "You can do this. We've come this far."

I nodded but didn't make a move to get out of the car. We sat in silence for a bit, and then Jasper undid his seatbelt, opened the door, and walked around the car to the passenger side. He opened my door and knelt before me on the curb. "Whatever's out there, I'm right here with you," he said, leaning over me to free me of my seatbelt. I still made no move, and he slid his arms under me and picked me up as if I were a rag doll, cradling me for a second before setting me down on the grass. "You're going to be just fine," he said, shutting the door and giving my hand a squeeze.

I was so numb, frozen. "First your left foot, then your right," Jasper coaxed. "Little steps. We'll get there. We'll get there." I started to walk with tiny, unsteady steps.

I didn't know who lived in the house now. I'd let the realtor take care of everything, and it had been a few years, so who knew if the original buyers were even still here. I stood at the bottom of the porch steps. It may as well have been Mount Everest in front of me.

"We can go back," Jasper said. "Am I pushing you too much? I know you can do this, but you have to know it too."

I gritted my teeth. "I can do this," I said more to myself than to him. "I can be strong. I can be strong for her."

I took Jasper's hand in mine and climbed one step, two, three. We were on the porch. My hand shook as it went to ring the doorbell. I could hear a baby crying inside. My hand stopped, hovered, in front of the glowing button. Jasper steadied my hand with his and said, "Let's ring it together." I bit my lip and nodded, letting his hand guide mine.

The bell was so familiar, but far away and buried, from a former lifetime. My hand in Jasper's was sweating, and I was trembling all over.

A kind-faced, tired woman opened the door with a baby on her hip. "Yes?" She looked a little confused, but not scared.

"Hi," I said, my voice not sounding like my own. "I'm really sorry to bother you. I grew up here. We were in the neighborhood and wondered if I could take a look. My name is Mary Alice Brandon."

"Oh! Yes, yes, I remember seeing that name on the contracts. Of course you can come in." The baby held a chubby fist of the woman's hair, trying to shove it in his mouth. "No, munchkin, don't chew Mommy's hair," she said, trying to loosen his tiny, fierce grip.

What had my mother said? _Under the floor_. What did that mean, the basement?

The woman followed us as we walked from room to room. I didn't blame her. If two strangers came to my door demanding to look around, I'd make sure they weren't trying to steal shit too.

"You're looking for something, aren't you?" she said as I flipped on the light by the basement stairs.

"Yes," I said. I should have been honest from the start. "This is going to sound crazy, but my mother sent me here. She said she was here. I don't know what that means."

"Well now, that sounds like an adventure!" she said kindly.

I closed my eyes in the dank basement, hoping to feel a pull, something, anything to lead me to what my mother meant. Nothing. There was nothing.

We went back upstairs, and I wandered from room to room, hoping to find some trapped bit of my mother's essence.

"This is silly," I said, my hands clenched into fists. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time. You've been very kind." I looked at the floor, embarrassed. My mother was just crazy. I didn't know why I'd thought I'd really find something.

The woman scratched the back of her leg with her other foot. The movement drew my eye to it, and to a bandage there. "What happened to your foot?" I asked.

"Oh, it's so silly. I was putting new sheets on the guestroom bed, and my toe got caught in something. I think there's a loose floorboard or something. I keep meaning to get my husband to do something about it."

_Under the floor_.

"Which room is the guestroom?" I asked, filled with hope again.

"The bedroom at the end of the hall on the second floor, the one facing the backyard.

Our old room.

"Can you show me?"

"Sure," she said, plunking her baby down in a playpen with a board book, which he immediately put in his mouth.

I followed her up the stairs, Jasper on my heels.

"Now, where was it?" she said to herself, her hands on her hips. She tapped her foot on the floor, here and there, listening. "Ah, this one, I think."

I got on my hands and knees and examined where she was tapping. I knocked on the wood—there was a hollow sound. The board was loose, like a tooth ready to come out. I tried to slip my fingers in the crevice, but it was too small. "Do you have a letter opener or something?"

Jasper said, "Here, use my credit card."

I took the card from him and slid it in the crack, tipping it until there was enough of a gap for me to get my fingers in. I handed the card back to Jasper, and I pulled the board back. _Please be here, please be here, Mom_.

I couldn't get the board all the way back, but there was enough room to pat around. I tried not to think about poisonous spiders and hungry rats. I focused on my mother's face. _Find me_.

My fingers touched dust, cold concrete, scary, unidentifiable bits, and then, finally, something square, solid. A small book, it felt like. It took a few attempts to get my hand around the book securely enough to slide it back through the gap.

It was a small, faded journal, yellowed with age. "I think this is it," I whispered.

Jasper helped me to my feet.

"Well, what is it?" asked the woman. "Is it what you were looking for?"

"I'm afraid to open it." And I was. What if it was nothing? I wanted my mother to be right, and the moment I opened the book, I'd know. There would be no more potential, no more hope of the unknown, just a stark yes or no answer.

"We'll do it together," said Jasper, rubbing my back.

"Okay."

My hands shook, but Jasper held his steady. He guided my hands, opening the cover of the book.

The book was open now, but I didn't dare look down at it. Jasper wasn't looking either. I think he wanted me to be the first to read it. He kissed the top of my head. "You can do this, Alice. We've come this far."

I took a deep breath and looked down. Big, loopy cursive, vaguely familiar.

_This journal is for one person only. I hope it's you who has found it, Mary Alice._

_- Mary Louise Brandon, January 1, 1976_

1976. I was born in 1984.

I didn't even exist yet.

"Under the floor," I said as my knees buckled. Jasper's arms were around me, holding me, lowering me to the ground gently.

"I found you," I murmured, sitting numbly with this impossible book in my lap.

* * *

[1] Tori Amos, "Mother," _Little Earthquakes_ (1991).

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A/N: I think I'm still behind on reviews. Still, reviews get an excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal. I think this time I'm using the story I wrote about being married to Michael Jackson.**


	24. Make Me Real

**A/N: Whoa, Nellie, it's been awhile. Sorry. Sorry. Yes, next update will come sooner. Very close to the end now.**

**Love to the usual, and hello to the new readers! Hi!**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns, blah blah, rolling on her big pile of money, blah.**

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Chapter 24: Make Me Real**

_When I went to school in Olympia  
Everyone's the same  
From parasites to psychopath  
Oh God, just please forget my name_

_- Hole [1]_

"Are you all right?"

I was sitting in Fitzsie's car. I had no memory of coming back here, saying goodbye to the woman living in our house.

"What happened? How did I get here?" I was leaning against Jasper in the backseat.

Jasper touched my cheek as if he thought I might shatter. "You fell to the floor, and then you stood up again, looked Mrs. Williams in the eye, shook her hand, and said you'd found what you needed. You told her to watch out for glass."

"I did?" I clasped my hands around my cheeks. "Was I Alice or Mary Alice?"

Jasper gently tugged my hands from my face and held them in his. "You are always Alice and Mary Alice to me, two parts of a whole." As if to demonstrate his point, he drew my hands together until I was palm to palm with myself.

I didn't feel like two parts of a whole. I felt jagged, like I was just fractured bits of me, and I couldn't figure out which parts were really me and which parts were my crazy. Or maybe the crazy part _was_ me. I didn't know. I was light through a prism, refracted into separate colors.

"Which part is real?" I whispered.

"Alice, you think of yourself as all these different people, like you've split yourself into multiple identities, but I see them as shades of you. You are all those things. You are a whole person. It's okay to be different colors. You can be made of different colors and still be just one Alice." He held me close, so close that I could feel his heart beating against my cheek. "You're always Alice to me, every color of the rainbow."

I looked at the weathered book on my lap.

"Are you going to read it now?" Jasper asked gently. "There's no rush, you know. If you don't feel up to it …"

"No," I said, clasping the book to my chest. "I need to know. I want to understand."

"Do you want me to give you some privacy?" He made a move as if to leave the car.

"Stay. Please." I didn't know if I could handle these pages alone.

"I'm here. I'm here," he said, squeezing my hand and letting me settle against his side.

I closed my eyes tightly, took a deep breath, and opened the journal.

***

_My name is Mary Louise, and today I am thirteen years old. I know things. I can see them. Time doesn't go one way for me. It goes up, down, right, left, in circles. I can skip forward or look behind. Sometimes I wish I could tell Mama, but I know she would punish me. She would say it comes from the devil, but it's just who I am. It's like when people are left-handed. They can't help it. I was just born this way. I don't know what else I can be. _

_I can see such beautiful things and some things that scare me. I can't tell anyone but you, my beautiful baby girl. Your name is Mary Alice. One day you will just be Alice, but right now, as I see you, you are a smiling, perfect baby girl with golden hair, prettier than any baby doll I ever played with when I was little. _

***

My head was swimming. I closed my eyes, feeling dizzy and nauseated. "Jasper, keep me here," I managed to choke out. "I feel like I might float away."

His arms were around me then, warm and strong. "You're not going anywhere away from me. I've got you. You're tied to my heart. I'll anchor you."

I nodded, inhaling deeply and feeling Jasper around me, his scent in me, his image in my head. Nothing but Jasper. He'd keep me here. I felt brave enough to read on.

***

_I can see you coming to me, Mary Alice. I'm going to meet a man who will give you to me. He won't love me. He'll take me away from this place, and I'll be happy, so happy. But he won't love me. When he gives me the part of his soul I need to have you, he'll leave, and I'll live with Mama again. But don't cry about it, my baby girl. I won't be sad. I know it's going to happen, so I'm not afraid. I still can't wait to meet you, to hold you in my arms. You are my greatest creation. You are the reason I was born. How can I love you so much, when you're not even alive yet? But I can see you, your smiling face. I can hear your laugh. I can feel your kiss on my cheek, your chubby arms wrapped around my neck. I want you here now, but I know I have to wait._

_So I'm writing in this journal. I'm writing whenever I feel I can't wait one second more to hold you in my arms. Because if I write about you, I can see you in my head. You are my baby, and I will love you always, no matter what happens. Even … after._

***

I put the book down. I couldn't read anymore. Not today, not now.

"What does it all mean?" I murmured to myself. "I don't understand, Jasper. This book is … impossible."

"What does it say, honeybee?"

I pressed the book into his hands. "Read it. I can't … I'd read it to you, but …" I covered my eyes with my hands. I had chills running up and down my arms. "I just don't understand any of it."

Jasper sat for a minute, and I watched him as his eyes danced back and forth as they skimmed across the yellowing pages. I wondered if he heard the words in his head when he read, or if they were just words that scrolled by. Maybe he was picturing my mom or hearing her voice reciting to him.

"Wow," he said when he had finished. I noticed he didn't read past where I'd stopped. He probably felt I should be the first to read it. "She's remarkable."

"But it's impossible, isn't it?" I asked, taking the book back.

"Why?"

"How can she have known everything? She wrote this before she'd even met my … dad." It felt weird using _dad_—s_perm donor_ or _baby daddy_ seemed more fitting.

"Your mom is special. I've known it from the first time I saw her, the same way I knew my life would never be the same the first time I saw you."

"Can this be real?" I asked.

"Why not? Maybe it's a gift from the cosmos, to make up for everything else. Maybe your mom really knew all these things. You know things, don't you?"

"I don't want to." I curled my arms around myself. "I don't want to be like her. Not like that."

"You're not. I promise you. You're not destined for that life," he said.

"How can you say that? How can you know?"

He shrugged. "I know things too. Or, at least, I feel them, here." He pointed at his heart. I looked off in the distance, my arms still wrapped around me.

We sat in silence for a while until Jasper took advantage of my introversion to sneak the "I'm Kind of a Big Deal" hat back on my head.

"You're an asshole," I said, but I laughed, which was probably his intent.

"Where are you going?" he asked as I flung the hat off my head and opened the car door.

"Do you want to see my high school?" I asked suddenly.

Jasper nodded and got into the front seat. We slid in simultaneously, like we were partners in a 70s cop drama. We just needed cheesy mustaches.

As if he could read my mind, he started bouncing up and down in the seat and drumming on the dashboard, sing-shrieking the opening lines of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage."

"I love you," I said, shaking my head as I started the car up.

He answered with, "I'm tellin' y'all; it's sabotage!"[2]

"You're dead sexy, even when you're nutso," I said, pulling away and watching my childhood home grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror until it was just a dot of color, and then gone. Blink. Poof. Nothing. As if it never existed.

The weird thing about driving around somewhere I'd spent my whole life but hadn't returned in years was how _familiar_ it all was. I could feel myself slipping into old versions of me, like a playset of _The Wizard of Oz_ I had as a kid. You could put the Dorothy doll in this little revolving compartment and spin her, and she'd end up on the Oz side or the Kansas side in a strange version of roulette. I felt spun, dizzy, passing through lifetimes and forgotten skins. I had to concentrate on my breathing to stay on the road, to remember that I was a grown woman who could reach the brakes and accelerator, not a pigtailed, wide-eyed girl going on errands with her beautiful mommy.

"We're here," I said, and for a moment I felt like I was my mother, dropping me off for a day of school. I parked in one of the visitor parking spots and rang the bell to be let in. It was the middle of the day; kids were probably still in class. I could hear the shouts of a P.E. class doing running drills in a field behind the school, the sharp blaring of a coach's whistle punctuating the rowdy chatter. When the door buzzed, I jumped back, but Jasper steadied me. He put his hand on mine, and we opened the heavy metal door together.

My knees went shaky the minute I stepped over the threshold. Jasper held me up while my legs shook. "We can go back," he said, but I shook my head. Something was driving me here. I needed to come back. I needed to finish … something.

We walked to the main office. The staff was all different. These weren't the ladies I remembered from high school, and maybe that was for the best. I didn't know if I could face them. The last time I saw their faces was when we had the big meeting with the principal and my grandmother, and they'd looked at me like I was a strange creature in the zoo: some were repulsed, some were pitying, some were morbidly curious, but none could look away.

I signed in on the clipboard and said, "Uh, hi. I used to go here. I wanted to look around. Would that be all right?"

The woman looked over her horn-rimmed glasses at me. She glanced over my shoulder at Jasper. She sighed. "That's against policy," she said. "That's not official school business."

"I went here, I swear," I said, gripping the counter with both hands. I sang the school's alma mater, which was to the tune of "O Canada." "O-lympia, the eagles fly so free …" I kept singing despite hearing Jasper snicker behind me, making my arms into big eagle's wings and flapping.

"What's all this?" said Principal Shumway, emerging from his office. Shit, he was still here. I should have figured he was here for life.

"Should I call security?" asked the receptionist.

"It's me, Principal Shumway," I said, scared to death. My words tumbled out even though there was no breath behind them. "Mary Alice Brandon."

"You? Here? You look different," he said.

"You remember me?"

He chuckled to himself while patting his pockets for his roll of antacids. "Erm, you don't easily forget a student like you," he said, popping a Tums into his mouth.

I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that, but I said in carefully measured tones, "Would you mind terribly if I showed my friend around the school? I won't disrupt any classes."

"You never were a troublemaker," he said, chewing thoughtfully. He looked like a pensive cow. "I don't see the harm," he said. "But no singing in the hallway. No more alma mater from you, young lady." He winked in what was probably supposed to be a friendly gesture. I accepted it, grateful even for his strange kindness.

The secretary begrudgingly handed us visitor's pass stickers, and Jasper put one on me as carefully as if he were pinning a corsage to me for prom. I did the same for him, and we giggled, even though Principal Shumway and receptionist McBitch probably thought we were insane. Oh, who cared what they thought? They didn't matter. They were the past.

Jasper was the future.

We clasped hands and walked slowly down the long corridor, our footsteps echoing in the emptiness. Through the windows in the doors I could see students bored, studying, sleeping, learning, dreaming, gossiping, suffering. The whole spectrum of the high school experience. That would never change.

My body knew where it was going before I was fully aware—maybe Mary Alice was leading me. I pulled Jasper along with me to the auditorium, a place I hadn't returned since that horrible night. The familiar smell as we opened the door nearly knocked me down, and when I closed my eyes I was only Mary Alice, hair down my back, ready, knowing, and unable to stop what would happen.

The auditorium was empty and dark, but I knew where the light switches were. I slowly, methodically flipped the switches until the stage was illuminated and there was enough light not to trip over the rows of seats. And then Mary Alice took over. She tugged her hand away from Jasper's, and the two of us, Mary Alice and I, made our way to the stage. I was more of a passenger in our shared body, not sure her intent. She was the driver. She was in charge.

Our legs did not wobble as we climbed up the side stairs. We kicked off our shoes, removed our socks, the soles of our feet against the varnished wooden boards on the stage. The stage needed sweeping. I could feel grains of sand, dust, and crumpled candy wrappers under our feet.

This wood. This was the same wood. This was where we had been violated, humiliated. Did the wood hold the memory too? Did objects retain the memory of the horrors that had happened here?

Our feet traced a path, like a bee dancing in the hive to show the other bees how to find the field of flowers. I recognized the old steps, the blocking of the "Little Bird" number. Our feet still remembered. Our body remembered. Just being in such close contact with the wood made us unable not to complete the old motions.

Like ghosts, the memories of the boys swirled around us. Mary Alice kept dancing. She walked up, backed away, twirled out of reach. I wanted to shout to her, to tell her to stop, to warn her what was coming, but the ghosts came. They came to hurt us all over again. I tried to get Mary Alice to punch at the air, but she just spun around, letting the ghosts pass through us. She was strong enough; I was not. I wanted to run away, but she kept going through the steps in a desperate dance of inevitability.

Finally it was too much. Our body grew heavy, and Mary Alice allowed me to collapse to the ground. We crouched, face to the wood almost in supplication, and I wept. I raged. I pounded my fists on the stage. I tore at my hair while Mary Alice watched from inside. I felt as though she were hugging me, whispering, "Hush, hush," and stroking my hair, but I realized as my sobs began to still that it was Jasper here, Jasper around me, Jasper lifting us—me—to my feet.

"I've got you," he whispered against my hair. "No one will hurt you. I'm here. I'll never leave your side."

And he hugged me so close that even Mary Alice could feel it, and she stretched inside me against my skin until we fit the same outline. He joined us together, the past and the present, the innocent and the damaged. We were one.

He sang, "_If you cross your fingers, ghosts will pass right through / From across the river, I'll watch over you_." [3]

"That's pretty," I said when I'd regained my voice, feeling strength in my legs again. I crossed my fingers and stretched my arms up high. _Ghosts will pass right through_. Jasper grabbed my arms, helping me stretch higher. He kissed my crossed fingers, first my right hand, then my left.

He twirled me slowly, as if I were a toy ballerina. "I think you should take a bow," he said. "Say goodbye to this place. Say that you're done with it." He crept away, leaving me alone on the stage, just me and Mary Alice, who was the same shape as I was. We were exactly the same size.

I stepped downstage until my toes curled over the edge, as if I were ready to dive into the deep end of the community pool. My toes gripped the wood, enjoying how the right angle of the stage fit so perfectly underneath them.

I put my hands on my knees and lowered my head, bowing deeply.

I took a few steps back and took a deep curtsey, letting my right leg slide behind my left all the way to the ground. My grand diva bow.

Jasper was whistling the same tune he'd sung to me when he'd picked me up. _If you cross your fingers, ghosts will pass right through_ …

I straightened up, closed my eyes, crossed my fingers with my arms out wide, listening to his whistling, and felt a breeze rush between my fingers, maybe from the open door at the back of the auditorium, or maybe the ghosts leaving me forever.

_From across the river, I'll watch over you._

Even with my eyes closed, I could feel Jasper's gaze upon me, buoying me up, protecting me from drowning. He kept whistling, low and gentle, as I stood, arms wide, as if I were about to take flight.

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[1] Hole, "Olympia" (alternate lyrics), _Live through This_, 1994.

[2] The Beastie Boys, "Sabotage," _Ill Communication_, 1994.

[3] The Paper Raincoat, "Don't Be Afraid," _The Paper Raincoat_, 2009.

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A/N: Once again, I think I'm still behind on reviews. But reviews do get eighth grade journal excerpts. **

**In addition, I'm auctioning off up to fifteen drabbles ($25 = 250 words, $30 = 300 words, etc.) and up to three one-shots (for minimum bids of $100 apiece), as well as a pair of Bella mitts handknit by me (starting bid of $30) for The Fandom Gives Back to raise money for children's cancer research. Check details out on their website (www dot thefandomgivesback dot com). I said no slash only because I write slash terribly, but if you want terribly written slash, be my guest. I will write anything, but be careful what you wish for.**


	25. Rid of Me

**A/N: Yo yiggidy yo. I got stymied by whoring myself out for various auctions and such. Really. Really. We are almost done with this story.**

**I'd like to take a minute to pimp out a story I'm betaing, Temptation Girl's "Walter Cannon's Theory, Expanded." I have NO idea where the story is going, but it begins with Edward working in a morgue, and it's got gruesome scientific detail and awesomeness. It's in my faves if you want to take a look-see. And you should, for there is much to behold.**

**Disclaimer: I have no interest in ever making money off of this shit, so Stephenie Meyer, you are safe. Please do not sue.  
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Chapter 25: Rid of Me**

_I'll make you lick my injuries  
I'm gonna twist your head off, see  
'til you say, "Don't you wish you never, never met her?"_

_- P. J. Harvey [1]_

I was just putting my socks and shoes back on when I heard the clanging of the double doors swinging open and shut. I stood up quickly, not sure who I'd see.

"Mary? Mary Alice? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

I felt the cold clamminess come back, but Jasper was there, steadying me. I gulped and turned around. His voice hadn't changed, and I felt like a teenager again.

"Hi, Mr. Crandall. You still work here?"

"Are you kidding? I love it here. They'll have to drag my corpse out of this building." He kept walking toward me. I noticed he had a slight limp. Did my mother do that?

I ran down the stage steps and gave him a hug. He didn't flinch away from me, and for that I was grateful. "It's good to see you," I said.

"How's your ..."

I held up my hand. "I'd rather not talk about …"

"Of course, of course. I'm sorry to bring it up." He smiled at me the way I imagined a dad might smile at his kid. His hair was graying at his temples, but otherwise he looked the same, skin unlined, his smile warm and easy as ever. It was _good_ to see him without the bruises and puffy lip. He could heal. It was as if it had never happened. "You look wonderful, Mary Alice."

"Thank you." I stared at my feet, and then my eyes drifted toward the cowboy boots next to my small shoes. "Oh. Hey, Mr. Crandall, this is Jasper, my … um, my boyfriend." I didn't know if I'd ever get used to calling him that.

"It's an honor," Mr. Crandall said, holding out his hand.

Jasper gripped it, nodding. "I've heard a lot about you," he said. "Alice says you were quite a teacher."

He chuckled. "Oh I don't know about that. I didn't have to teach her anything. She's amazing. Have you seen what she can do? Have you seen how she can fly?"

"Actually, Mr. Crandall, I … don't … do that … anymore."

"Don't do what?" he asked.

"I haven't been on stage since, you know, since that night."

His eyes clouded over. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I always figured … your love of theater …" He sighed. "That never should have happened. You know that, don't you? I did everything I could to…"

"I know, I know. Of course none of it was your fault. I just … couldn't go back. I didn't want to be who I was. And I didn't want to be anyone else. So I became no one." I shrugged.

He shook his head, smiling sadly. "You know I think about you every year, every time I hold auditions. No one can hold a candle to you. You are that once-in-a-lifetime student. I was lucky to be someone allowed to see your light. Did it make you happy?"

_Did it make me happy?_

I tried to remember everything before my mother's breakdown. I remembered the feel of stage makeup, the smell of spirit gum, first night jitters. I remembered the minute I stepped out on stage, felt the heat of the stage-lights on my cheek, how in that moment the rest of the world melted away. I lived another life. I lived many other lives, and I could feel the love of the audience. They loved _me_, whatever flaws I poured into the character I played, the sorrows of home, of not knowing my father, of feeling, but not understanding, my mother's unhappiness. I could let all that show on the outside, and they loved me _because_ of it. Not in spite of it. And then the applause, the cheers. Audible love for me in all my mistakes and regrets, myself turned inside out. Me.

"Yes," I whispered. I closed my eyes, still hearing the applause, the _approval_. The permission to exist as I was, without secrets.

He grasped my hands roughly. "Then don't forget who you are," he said. "Don't let some teenage assholes take that away from you. You have a gift, Mary Alice. If you said it didn't matter either way, I'd be content if you let it fade. But it _meant_ something to you. So fight for it. Goddamn it, fight for it as you would your own life."

I opened my eyes and saw Mr. Crandall peering at me. I felt a little nudge inside from Mary Alice. _He's right, you know_, she whispered in my ear. I nodded slowly, not sure what to say.

"Just think about it, Mary Alice. And I'm always proud of you, no matter what you do."

"Thanks," I mumbled, swallowing down the lump in my throat.

His tone shifted, all business-like again. "I've got to do some Xeroxing before rehearsal tonight," he said. "First read-through of _Once upon a Mattress_."

Jasper's face lit up. "That's such a good show!" He hummed a little of "I'm in Love with a Girl Named Fred."

We both stared at him. "Why _do _you know so much musical theater, Jasper?" I asked.

"Rogers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, and Bernstein were the Baby Einstein in the Whitlock household," he said.

"Wait, how do you feel about Andrew Lloyd Weber?" I asked.

Jasper just made gagging sounds.

"Oh good," I said, wiping fake sweat from my brow. "That would have been a dealbreaker, you know."

Mr. Crandall laughed. "I'm glad to hear some things haven't changed, Mary Alice. '_Doubt thou the stars are fire; / Doubt that the sun doth move; / Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt Mary Alice's hatred of Andrew Lloyd Weber.'_ You take care now."

I gave him another big hug, and a part of my heart sort of settled and sighed into my body as he squeezed me back. I watched him walk away.

"He's nice," Jasper said when we were alone again.

"Yeah."

"What now?"

I wrinkled my forehead in thought. "I'm not sure. But I think I'm done here."

Jasper gently tugged the visitor's sticker off my shirt and kissed my forehead. "Let's go, milady." We held hands and walked back to Fitzsie's car.

I felt okay driving after seeing Mr. Crandall. That wasn't so hard. When I was back inside the car, I clutched my mother's diary to my chest. "Thanks, Mom," I said, feeling a spark inside my belly, something asleep that was slowly waking up. He didn't hate me. He thought of me. _Fight for it_, he'd said.

I wasn't even sure where I was going until I turned into the parking lot. Was it fate, then, that made me drive to the diner where we'd go after rehearsals? Was I just showing Jasper all my old haunts, trying to show him _things_ because I couldn't show him everything inside myself?

"Are you hungry?" I asked, putting the car into park and pulling up the emergency brake.

"I'm always hungry," he said, and I laughed.

"I'm not sure where you put it all," I said, patting his tight stomach.

"Hey, careful with my food baby. He's delicate."

"Who's your food baby daddy?" I asked, cupping my hands over his nonexistent paunch.

"In the case of Unborn Baby Whitlock: French fries, you _are_ the baby's father," he said in a booming Maury Povich voice. I was surprised I could tell he was doing a Maury Povich voice, but even more surprising was that he knew enough Maury Povich to do a half-decent impression.

I was too busy laughing to be paying attention to the people coming out of the diner. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and was about to tease Jasper about watching those paternity-test shows, when I heard a braying laugh. My blood ran cold, and I froze where I stood. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. One hand was on the car door handle, the other clenched in a fist.

"What's wrong, sweetpea?" Jasper could always feel my mood shift.

I folded myself very, very small, crouching, wanting to crawl underneath the car. I wrapped my arms around my belly as if I could squeeze the air out of me to become smaller still.

Jasper was by my side in a second. "You're shaking, baby. What is it?"

My teeth were chattering, but I managed to grind out, "He's here."

"Who?"

"That laugh, it's _him_." I crossed my arms over my chest, remembering his unwanted, rough touch.

"Mitchell?" Jasper whispered, his eyes almost black with anger. I nodded, biting my lip. "Motherfucker," he said, letting me go and turning on his heel.

"No, don't, Jasper," I said, but no sound actually came out. It was as if I were in one of those game show silence chambers. I reached for his sleeve, but he was too fast.

"Which one, Alice? Which one is it?" I'd never heard him like this, so uncontrollably angry.

His shouting drew the attention of Mitchell, who'd gotten fatter and balder since I'd seen him last. It was him though; I was sure of it. "Don't," I said hoarsely, barely phonating. "He's going to see me."

When I dared to look, I saw Jasper striding over to the guys coming down the diner's handicapped ramp. They were wearing some sort of uniform shirts, and it turned out that Jasper didn't need me to identify him, since they all had embroidered nametags. It looked as though Mitchell worked at a gas station or auto body shop or something.

"Mitchell?" Jasper said, waltzing right up to him with a small smile curling up the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, bro?"

"You from here?"

"Grew up here, sure." He started looking uneasy. "What's it to you, homo?"

"Charming," said Jasper, and he drew back his fist, punching Mitchell right in the mouth. I thought I heard something cracking. Mitchell's two friends looked pretty tough, but the minute Jasper decked him, they backed away, not wanting to get involved.

Mitchell was holding his jaw, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. "What the _fuck_ was that about? You're _dead_, man, _dead_." He wiped his bleeding lip roughly with the heel of his hand.

I ran up and grabbed Jasper's arm as he drew it back to hit him again. "No, don't do it. Don't. He's not worth it. He's not worth anything," I pleaded.

Jasper lowered his fist. His knuckles were bleeding. I kissed his hand. "He's not worth it," I said again.

I heard a rush of wind behind me, and Jasper's other fist was up, blocking Mitchell's ineffectual punch. "Don't try me, fucker," Jasper said, his voice like acid. "You were going to hit her?"

"I was trying to hit you, you fuck, but your little bitch got in the way," Mitchell said.

Jasper pushed me gently behind him, ready to fight, but I held onto his arms. "Please, don't. You're just making it worse." I peeped out behind him, trying to get him to look at me, to calm down. I just wanted to get the hell out of here.

"Brandon? Is that you?" Mitchell said, squinting. "Well, I'll be fucked. Is this your girlfriend, Mary Alice? Your big burly girlfriend you brought to fight your battles?"

My mouth wasn't working. I was shrinking again. I'd soon disappear, small enough to fit in Jasper's back pocket, shrink until I would be visible only under a microscope. I'd blow away in the wind and be lost forever.

"Say the word, Alice, and he's dead." Jasper was breathing hard, in control for the moment, but ready to explode.

Inside me, Mary Alice pushed and prodded and kept my outline the same size. _I'm here. We're here. Together, no one can hurt us_. I felt her stretch inside me, filling me up like a balloon. She flowed through me, from my toes to the top of our head, and she was in my lungs and inside my vocal cords. Her words started coming out of my mouth. "No." Mary Alice was firm. She wasn't pleading; it was a command.

She made me step calmly in front of Jasper. He stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. He could sense the change.

"Funny, isn't it, Mitchell? So this is my girlfriend, because I'm a big dyke, right? But guess what? My big dyke girlfriend beat the shit out of you without even trying. So what does that make you?"

He was staring at me, gaping, mouth still bloody.

"What, you don't have anything to say to me? I'm here. Want to humiliate me? Want to win another fucking bet with your loser friends? How's that gas pumping job working for you? Do you feel inadequate because of those big nozzles?"

He spat blood in the dirt by my feet. "You're just a flat-chested little whore."

Mary Alice laughed in his face. "Is that the best you can do? If we're going by physical appearances, doughboy, I think I'd easily win 'most bangable.' By a long shot. Both sexes, any sexual orientation."

"You're as crazy as your mother."

I could feel Jasper's hands on my shoulders, squeezing me. I could feel him itching to fight this battle for me. But it was mine to fight, and he knew it. He knew he had to stand and watch me do it by myself.

Mary Alice wrapped around my throat, covered my skin like a shield. She was on the inside and the outside now, and I couldn't tell which parts were her and which parts were me. "You're wrong," we said. "Crazier."

He took a step back.

"You remember what started all this, don't you? Do you remember how bad Mr. Crandall looked? Do you remember the bruises blossoming on his face, the rainbows of blood under his skin?" We licked our lips and bared our teeth.

We walked toward him, feeling ten feet tall.

"So if she did that, and I'm crazier, what do you think I'm capable of?" we whispered. "Do you want to find out?"

We tilted our head up to look him right in the eye, unflinching. My legs wanted to buckle, but Mary Alice was like steel in me.

"Fucking psycho," he muttered, turning around and running to catch up with his chickenshit friends.

"Run away, Mitchell. Run home with your dick between your legs," we called after him.

We waited until he'd gotten in his friend's piece of shit car and driven away. Mary Alice faded a little, and my legs gave way, but as always, Jasper was there to catch me. He picked me up and spun me around. "Alice! Jesus, Alice! You were brilliant. And dead sexy, I might add."

I started shaking for real now, no longer having the steel of Mary Alice in me. She was still there, but resting. I sobbed against his neck. "Shhh," he said, setting me back on my feet and holding me tightly. "It's okay. You did it. You were amazing. If you can face down that asshole, you can do anything."

I couldn't stop crying. "I'm okay," I said, sniffling.

"I know."

"I'm really okay."

"I'm so proud to know you that I want to climb on top of this diner roof and sing like Tony in _West Side Story_."

"Please don't."

He pouted, and I bit his adorably protruding lip. "I thought you liked my singing," he managed to say around my mouth.

"I do. I love it. But you might break your neck. And I want to take a look at that hand. Who knows what kind of nasty diseases live in his mouth? Let's get you some Neosporin."

"Even first aid sounds sexy coming from your lips, baby."

"Gauze. Sterile bandages. Medical tape. Hydrogen peroxide. Am I getting you hot?"

"Unbelievably."

"Analgesic."

"Don't make me blow a load in my jeans."

"Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug."

He pounced, kissing me so hard that the wind was knocked out of me. I grabbed handfuls of his hair, trying to pull him closer and closer to me until weren't two separate people anymore. It was only when I heard him wince as I grasped his hands in mine that I remembered his bleeding knuckles.

"Let's get you cleaned up." I pulled him to the car and drove to the drugstore down the block. He held the shopping basket on his arm, and I knocked things off the shelves in the first aid aisle, doing a goofy act of rubbing the boxes on my face and my breasts, presenting them like Vanna White, and tucking them into the basket as if he were a Chippendale's dancer and the basket were his tiny G-string. "Here you go, big boy," I said, slipping in a tube of Neosporin.

People were staring, but I didn't care. All I could see was Jasper, the want in his eyes. I pulled him toward the family planning aisle and tossed in a box of condoms.

"Oh, really?" he said, his eyebrow cocked.

"Paregoric," I said breathily.

"If you keep talking that way, this won't be enough," he groaned, putting a few more boxes in the basket.

"Hotel check-in is after three," I said, leading him to the cashier.

"It's after three," said Jasper, picking me up and setting me on the counter.

"Exactly," I said, ignoring the pimply faced cashier flushing red behind me. He was clearing his throat, trying to get our attention.

"Um. Um. You can't. Um. I'll have to get the, um. Manager." His voice cracked awkwardly.

I took pity on him, so I gave Jasper another big kiss and slid off the counter. "Sorry. Newlyweds, you know." I winked.

"Cash or credit?" he asked, blushing harder as he bagged the condoms.

Jasper threw a couple of twenties on the counter. "Keep the change. We're in a rush."

He looped the bag over his arm, threw me over his shoulder, and ran to the car. I squealed the whole way, kicking my feet and pounding on his back with my fists. He deposited me as carefully as a baby in the driver's seat, slid across the hood of the car, Dukes of Hazzard style, and was next to me before I'd even gotten the key in the ignition.

"You're in for the disinfecting of your _life_, Whitlock," I said, starting the car. He just leaned over and started kissing my neck, running his hands through my hair. "Oh god," I breathed. "If you want us to get to the hotel in one piece, you're going to have to ease up."

"I'll be good," he murmured, tracing patterns on my collarbone, lightly brushing his hands lower, giving me hints of the paradise that awaited us on unfamiliar chintz bedspreads and rough, bleached sheets.

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[1] P. J. Harvey, "Rid of Me," _Rid of Me_ (1993).

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**A/N: You may call me Feisty Y. Cockblocker. **

**I'll TRY, I PROMISE, to stay on top of reviews. Eighth grade journal delights, as usual.**


	26. Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye

**A/N: I continue to be updating fail. Carry on. Sorry for the cheesetastic title/epigraph. YES IT WAS USED IN DAWSON'S CREEK. DEAL WITH IT.**

**Disclaimer: I have no intention of ever trying to make money off of this shizz. Amen.**

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Chapter 26: Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye**

_You are everything you ought to be  
So just let your heart reach out to me  
I'll be right by your side_

_- Beth Nielson Chapman [1]_

As I slept, I felt something brush my face, eyelashes, feathers, maybe the back of someone's hand. I woke up with a start in the darkness, momentarily forgetting where I was. A clock radio glowed red on the table by the bed, and the room smelled like a doctor's waiting room. The sheets were scratchy, but I could feel Jasper's heart beating against my bare skin. He smelled like ointment and bandages and a little bit like me after we had spent the better part of the afternoon and evening fused together in mind and body. I breathed in his scent, enjoying the feel of the entire length of his body pressed against mine. Slowly, the events of yesterday imprinted themselves again in my head. Flickers of Jasper clocking Mitchell, of me facing him down and making him run from me, flashed in my mind's eye. I felt oddly free, as if I might just sprout wings and fly away.

"Did I really do that?" I whispered to myself. Jasper's breathing held steady, and I knew he must be in a deep slumber. It was too dark to make out his features, so I traced his face with my hand, running my finger along his eyebrows, down the bridge of his nose. I felt the sandpaper of his cheeks with my palm, and then rubbed his back when he snuffled and flipped over. I wondered what he was dreaming about.

Although the room was dark, I could see a light pulsing. I blinked a few times, trying to find the source of the light, until I realized it was more of a pulsing in my head, like a heartbeat. I slipped out of bed, finding Jasper's undershirt in a tangle of clothes on the floor. I walked with my eyes closed, listening as hard as I could. My hand found my overnight bag and my mother's journal inside. As soon as my fingers closed around it, my whole body started to hum, the energy traveling from the book through my fingertips, up my arm and into my whole body.

I didn't know how I knew, but every neuron in my body was telling me I needed to finish reading the journal. I could hear a clock ticking, separate from the electronic whirring of the clock on the nightstand. I slipped into the bathroom, closing the door partway, and flicked on the light.

The light pierced my eyes, prickling the back of my brain, and I blinked and squinted and swore softly under my breath until they'd adjusted. I closed the lid on the toilet and perched on top with my feet tucked up on the edge. I rested the book on my knees as I continued reading.

_Hello, my darling. Today was hard. Mother is always so afraid of what might happen to me out in the world, just because of what happened to Daddy. She never lets me do anything, and she thinks everything is God's punishment, usually for something I've done. But I haven't done anything wrong. When she gets like that, I think about you. I focus on your face that I know better than my own. You make the rest of the world disappear, and nothing matters so much as knowing I will meet you some day. _

Some of the journal entries showed her day-to-day life, going to school, biting her tongue around my grandmother. There were boys interested in her, but she didn't ever encourage them; she was waiting for my dad. My mom sounded so fun and full of life, and I realized that all that time I'd spent feeling sorry for her and her sad life was maybe wasted, because she was okay with it. Despite the hardships of her life, she was _happy_.

Maybe when you knew what was going to happen to you, you just embraced it as inevitable. There was no anxiety over the "what-ifs," because there _were_ no "what-ifs." There was only acceptance, and some sort of satisfaction that came of knowing things unfolded exactly as you knew they always would.

My ass was starting to go numb from sitting on the hard toilet seat lid—how much time had gone by? While I read my mother's words, the motel no longer existed. I was dropped into her life, into these ghostly memories, watching silently as my mother grew up in front of me. I thought that maybe I'd always been there, watching—at least I had been, in her mind.

I turned the page and was surprised to see I'd reached the end of the book.

_My darling Mary Alice,_

_I feel the time is coming. I'm going to meet him, your father. It's going to happen soon. I'm not sorry you won't know him. I know what he is, and I know what his reason is for being here—to bring you to me. I have seen my life stretch before me as if I've flipped to the end of the book and read the last page. I know the end of my story. And I want you to know that none of it is your fault. This is the way things were supposed to be, and I only wish I could spare you the pain. But never, ever blame yourself. _

_And know this: You are not like me. You won't end up this way. There always must be balance in this world, so if I am to receive this great gift, I must give something up as well. And I don't mind. I would give up anything for you. I would give my life for you and still think I'd gotten the better end of the deal._

_You might wonder someday if I was ever happy. Despite what you may see, know this: I am happy that you are here. I am so proud that I can call you my child. It's crazy, right? Maybe I'm crazy, to believe all this, but the pictures come to me, this movie of my life, and I see your face. I can hear your laughter, feel your sweet kisses on my cheek. It's more real than this pen in my hand. You are coming to me, and you are my joy and my light, and I will regret nothing, not one day on this earth._

_I know that someday I'll be trapped inside myself, seeing you but not being able to control my body or my thoughts. I'll be a prisoner of my own self, unable to speak to you the way I want to. I know I don't have much time left. So I'm writing it all down for you. I'm proud of you, and I will love you forever, even when you think I am not there. You are always a part of me. You were the reason I was born. You are a miracle I was allowed to hold, like being able to adorn my hair with stars and wear a cloth woven from moonlight. You shouldn't be possible, and yet, here you are, mine. How can I complain about my future when you are a part of it? How many people get to embrace Paradise, even for a moment?_

_I'm the lucky one._

_Never blame yourself. It was always going to happen this way. I am not afraid._

_So, goodbye, my miracle, goodbye before I tell you hello._

I closed the book, grabbing a few sheets of rough toilet paper from the roll next to my elbow. I dabbed at my eyes, crying for … what exactly? I wasn't sad for my mother. I prodded my heart's sorrow with a cold, doctor's touch, trying to examine its source and was surprised to discover that it wasn't sorrow at all. It was relief. It was a huge burden lifted from my shoulders, the weight of the world that had been pressing on me. I was the one who'd ruined my mother's life. My dreams to be on stage had indirectly caused the attack that marked the beginning of my mother's psychotic break.

But she was saying that she _knew_. She chose this, maybe. I didn't believe in inevitability, except in the case of my impending loss of sanity. I'd end up just like her.

My mother's words glowed in front of me: _You are not like me._

"How do you know?" I said, putting my ear to the book and trying to hear my mother's voice.

_Because. I just do._ Did I just imagine her voice? It seemed to whisper from the deep crease in the spine of the book, her essence trapped in its pages. I held my ear close to listen again.

I heard something muffled, something familiar but momentarily unidentifiable, and it took me a moment to realize it was my cell phone ringing inside my purse slung over the chair by the motel desk. I closed the book and walked silently, deliberately, to answer the phone. I didn't let go of the book.

Without looking at caller ID, I knew it would be Meadowview, and I knew my mother was dead.

***

"Hello?" I'd already seen the familiar number on my screen. "Yes, yes this is Mary Alice Brandon. Yes, I understand. I'll be there as soon as I can. Thank you."

Jasper sat up slowly, his large body setting the old coiled springs in the bed squeaking. "What is it?" he whispered in alarm. I was so not in my body that I nearly laughed that even coolheaded Jasper could be reduced to a panic by a late-night phone call.

"It's okay," I mouthed at him while I listened patiently to the nurse on the other line. "I'm all right," I said, returning to the phone call. "Thanks for asking."

Jasper waited as I disconnected the call, folded my phone, and placed it back in my purse.

I was calm and maybe a little bit numb. I could see he was waiting for me to speak first, but I didn't quite feel like talking. I felt as if I'd been packed in tissue paper and tucked away, a beloved porcelain figure in a box in an attic. I looked at my free hand, turning it this way and that by the light of the open bathroom door.

Finally he could wait no longer. "Who was that?" he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Meadowview," I said, still clutching my mother's journal in my hand.

He threw the sheet off and leapt to his feet, not caring that he was completely starkers. "Is everything all right? Why are they calling you? Is your mom okay?"

He ran his fingers through his hair and paced. I felt like I was floating, that the air around me was viscous, and his words came to me slowly, soundwaves traveling through dense fluid.

"Hmm?" I managed to say.

He was at my side in two strides, grasping my arms and gazing down at me. "Alice, please talk to me."

"Mother," I said, my lips suddenly feeling dry, my jaw rusted shut. "Died in her sleep."

"What?"

"My mommy is gone," I said, nothing yet feeling quite real.

"What?" he said again, and he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at me, probably wondering if he were still asleep.

"You shouldn't sit on the bedspread without pants on," I said. "They probably don't wash those as often as they should."

He collapsed slowly, like a snowman melting in fast-forward, and soon he was shaking with sobs.

I walked toward him slowly, the same careful, deliberate walk I'd made to answer the phone. I touched his bare shoulder. "It's okay."

"How can you be like this?" he asked.

"Like what?"

"Your mother just _died_, and … god, I don't even know."

I felt it again, that squeezing of my heart, and the light feeling of suddenly not feeling the pull of gravity on my body. "She's free now," I said simply. "And she's still here, with me." I tapped the book lightly with my hand. "She knew this would happen."

I flipped the book to the last entry and read it to Jasper as he cried. "She loved me," I said when I'd finished. "Can't you see that?"

"I always knew she loved you," he said almost angrily.

"I don't understand why you're crying," I said, sliding behind him and holding him to me. "And don't scrunch your hands like that. You'll reopen the wounds."

His hands relaxed slightly from their tight grip on the floral bedspread. I tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. "She's free. I'm happy for her."

"We don't mourn because the people we love are gone," he said. "We mourn because we don't get to see them anymore. I loved her. She was special to me before I even knew you."

His tears puzzled me, but I was also surprised and touched that he'd loved her even that much. "I guess I lost her so long ago that losing her physical body isn't such a big deal. Her spirit is free now, and that makes me happy."

I pulled his head into my lap, by turns smoothing down his hair and brushing away tears. "It's going to be okay," I said. "And I love you."

"Sing to me?" he asked, and I knew something changed with us. I didn't know what, exactly, but our center of gravity had shifted.

I sang the first thing that popped into my head, an old scratchy record my mother used to play on rainy days while we knit. "What's this funny singing, Mommy?" I would ask, listening to this majestic voice like a trumpet, rich, clear, and piercing.

"It's called opera, honey," she would answer time and time again.

"Why do you listen to it?"

"It sounds right with the rain, and it makes me feel like I am a living part of the whole universe," she would say.

I hadn't thought of the piece for years, and I was surprised I still even knew how the melody wound and meandered in paths unfamiliar to my untrained ear.

I skipped to the part that popped in my head, lyrics I hadn't even known I'd known coming out of my mouth softly, sounding nowhere near as triumphant as Leontyne Price, but each word felt etched on my heart. The words had always been there, it seemed, the same way her words had slept underneath the floorboards of our home for years, even before I was born.

_By some chance, here they are, all on this earth;  
and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,  
lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.  
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,  
oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;  
and in the hour of their taking away._ [2]

My voice wavered and sounded thin on the high notes, but I could see my mother in front of me, feel her behind me, within me, around me.

I sang the last stanza, feeling her move through my blood, through my life.

_And those receive me, who quietly treat me,  
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:  
but will not, no ,will not, not now, not ever;  
but will not ever tell me who I am. _[3]

Jasper was sleeping with his face pressed on my thigh, his cheeks still wet from crying. I bent over as far as I could and kissed his messy hair, not wanting to wake him up.

I thought of my mother's words, her letters she'd written before I existed, and she told me everything she wanted for me, and how proud I was, but never of my own future, of who I was, of who I would become, except I wasn't like her. I wouldn't become like her. She knew that much.

And as I closed my eyes, I saw her final written words glowing in front of me as if someone was writing them with sparklers in the dark on the Fourth of July: _So, goodbye, my miracle, goodbye before I tell you hello._

"Goodnight, Mom," I said as Jasper's steady breathing lulled me to a quiet, still state, and I felt like a shining star in the endless sky, illuminated by the love of everyone who had brought me to this very moment in time.

* * *

[1] Beth Nielson Chapman, "Say Goodnight," _Sand and Water_, 1997.

[2] Samuel Barber, _Knoxville: Summer of 1915_, 1947 (text by James Agee).

[3] Ibid.


	27. Somewhere Different Now

**A/N: There is probably only one chapter left. Thanks for coming along for this bumpy, intermittent, yearlong ride.**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer can have the entire contents of my pockets except for the raisins for my bunneh.**

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* * *

Chapter 27: Somewhere Different Now**

_I'm not quite lost, not quite found  
Just somewhere different now_

_- Girlyman [1]_

"Where do you think you'll scatter them—her, I mean?" Jasper pulled his collar up against the wind and cleared his throat. He was so worried about saying the wrong thing, but really, I was doing okay, considering the circumstances.

I cradled the small urn in the crook of my elbow, wondering if my mother had ever carried me like this. Now it was my turn to carry her. I was so glad to have Jasper around the last few days. He'd driven me to Meadowview to fill out paperwork and claim my mother's body and helped me make arrangements with the funeral home to have her cremated. My mother had never laid out specific plans of how she wanted to be buried, but I couldn't imagine she wanted to stay trapped in a wooden box under the weight of all that dirt. She needed the sunshine, the air, the freedom. She'd lived her whole life in a cage of one sort or another, and I wanted her to be unhampered by gravity now. It was the least I could give her. I wanted every particle remaining of her physical body to be scattered far and wide, until she was just part of the air around us.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe the ocean?" I thought about my recurring fantasies of running away, escaping with my mother and driving down Highway 1 to start a new life. "I think maybe somewhere along the California coastline, where it's all mountains and cliffs and crashing waves. I think she'd like that." The extremes of nature, beautiful and dangerous and so _alive_ that it almost filled me with fear—_that_ seemed to sum up my mother at her prime. It felt right.

"I'll come with you," Jasper said, drawing me closer to him, his arm around my waist.

"Of course you will," I said, smiling.

It had been a surprise, yet somehow not, when I learned of my mother's death. I probably went about the stages of grief all in the wrong order. First I felt relief, and it wasn't until after several days of numbness that I finally began to break down and mourn. And I wasn't even mourning that she was gone—I wept because I was sad for the life she had lived. She'd done it all, put up with it all, just to have me. She'd always known I was coming to her. And while that made me feel somehow better that she'd been happy with her lot, I also felt horribly guilty, that I could not possibly have been enough of a reward for her.

_No_, said Mary Alice in me. She was always with me now and surfaced especially whenever I'd get into cycles of self-hatred. _You are enough. We are enough. She wouldn't want you to feel guilty_.

I nodded and leaned more heavily into Jasper's side. He held me up as I knew he would, always ready to catch me. "I love you, you know," I said.

"I know," he smiled, tugging playfully on my earlobe.

"Cocky little son of a bitch, aren't you?" I said when he didn't say it back to me.

"Cocky little son of a bitch that loves you," he corrected, and I couldn't help grinning, even with the heaviness of my mother's ashes weighing down my arms and my heart.

Jasper was still on spring break, and since I wasn't expected back at work either, we got back on the road right away, Jasper and me and my mother, together as we had been so rarely, but those were also the happiest memories I had of her in my adult life. Jasper drove, because I didn't want to put the urn down. "Look, Mom," I'd say, pointing out the sights from the passenger side of the car. "Isn't it beautiful? Doesn't it make you want to fly?"

We didn't have an itinerary—we just wanted to end up somewhere in California. I wanted my mother to end up somewhere sunny. We stopped in antique stores and quaint diners and gas station convenience stores. We were drifters. We ate from sidewalk vendors and felt like we were on holiday, even though the purpose of our trip was dead serious. It was just like the fantasies I'd had of setting my mother free, except my mother wasn't here to enjoy it. _She's with you, always_, Mary Alice whispered in my ear, and I tried not to cry.

"Everything all right, sweet pea?" Jasper had seen a tear slide down my face before I'd turned back out the window.

"Yeah," I said. "I just wish I'd gotten to take my mom on this trip for real."

"You did the best you could for her. You did right by her. And you still do right by her, every day. Have you noticed the sun following us?"

"What do you mean?" I turned back to him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

"Even when it's overcast, it's like there's a spotlight on the car," Jasper said. "She's following us, I think."

I hugged the bronze urn to my chest until its firm edges pressed my flesh flat. "Is that you, Mom?" I said, raising my eyes heavenward.

_I'm always here_, I felt someone say. Mary Alice? Mom? I couldn't tell the difference anymore. I was sleepy, so my thoughts meandered, lining up with the nonsensical logic of the cusp of dreaming. _Half of you is made of her DNA_, I told myself. _Maybe Mary Alice has always been that half_. In my drowsy state, it made perfect sense, and I snuggled into the passenger seat, feeling the weight of the urn on me, for once not like a burden but more like an embrace.

***

"We're here," Jasper said.

"Where's 'here'?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. It was quiet, and my body felt strange not being in motion, not feeling the near-constant vibration of the car's old transmission. Everything in me was so still that I thought that maybe I, too, had escaped my body. "Am _I_ still here?"

He pressed his lips to my forehead, and I knew then that I hadn't gone anywhere. "It's late, and I was getting tired, and did you know you make cute mewling noises sometimes when you sleep?" Jasper had my door open, and he picked me up as easily if I had been a little child.

"You don't have to carry me," I said, mid-yawn. One arm curled around the back of his neck, the other held onto the urn like a child who didn't want to lose her mother in a crowd.

He didn't speak; he just buried his nose in my hair.

"What do I smell like?"

"Like Alice," he said simply.

I smiled for a moment before I started kicking my legs. "No, really. Put me down. I've been sitting all day."

He set me down gingerly and opened the trunk to get our bags out. I guessed Jasper must have checked us in while I was sleeping. We were already parked in front of our room. The air in the parking lot was thick and smelled like salt. It clung to my skin, heavy and damp, and I was pretty sure I could hear the ocean.

"Where are we?" I asked as Jasper slipped the keycard in the door slot.

"California. Elk," he said, bumping the door open with his hip.

"California elk?" I repeated. "This is a place of elk? Like a sanctuary or something?"

"No," he said. "I mean, it's _possible_ there are elk here—they might be stealthy elk—but we're in a place called Elk."

"Why here?" I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

"It seemed right," he said, "especially as I did not pass any cities called Dik-Dik."

I rolled my eyes at him before I said, "I think Mom might not mind resting in Elk."

"Yeah," Jasper said, holding the door open for me after he'd dumped our bags.

"Thank you for driving all day," I said. I put the urn on the rickety desk and stood on tiptoe to link my fingers behind Jasper's neck.

He lifted me up and squeezed hard. "You know I'd do anything for you, right?"

An image came to me of my mother and him in her room as she tried to teach him how to knit. How many hours had he sat there, off the clock, just to give her that sliver of happiness? I was too choked up to answer, so I just nodded against him, hoping he'd understand.

"Let's get you to bed," he said, setting me down on the mattress. He unlaced my shoes, slipping them off one by one, and slowly, painstakingly undressed me. He peeled off my socks, undid each button on my blouse as if he thought I was breakable. It wasn't about lust, although in those few moments after he'd removed my street clothes but before he'd slipped my favorite t-shirt of his over my head, I felt his gaze glance across my skin like a searchlight. There would be time later for passion and hunger, and I gladly would have jumped him if he'd so much as let slip that half-grin that drove me mad, but I felt he wanted to do something for me, wanted to show me I wasn't alone in this world, to make me believe there was still someone who'd look after me. That after so many years of having to be the grown-up, I could step back and let someone else take care of me.

He flipped off the light, and I could hear fabric falling to the floor and Jasper's heavy, sleepy sigh. The mattress groaned as he slid in next to me, and I marveled at how our legs fit together, cool and smooth to warm and rough. His hand slid underneath the back of my shirt, and again there was the contrast of my smooth, cool skin against his warm and calloused palm. "Who's going to sing tonight?" I murmured sleepily, but I nodded off before I could identify the tune Jasper began to hum in my ear.

We were still tangled together when the sunrise began to flood the room with pinks and oranges, transforming the bare walls into something magical. "It's like living inside a rainbow," I said with wonder. _Is this for you, Mom? Or __**is**__ this you?_ "Thank you, stealthy elks," I said, and I knew Jasper was awake when he chuckled into his pillow.

"Sleep well?" he asked as he scratched his head, only further messing up his bedhead.

"Always do when you're with me," I said. For a flash I felt guilty about my happiness, for this moment of contentment. Shouldn't I have been mourning my mother? Now I had no one, no blood relation left in the world. _You mourned me while I lived_, my mother seemed to say to me through our shared DNA.

"Do you think Elk is the place? Do you think your mom might … want to stay here?"

I slowly got out of bed, stretching my legs before setting them on the floor. I peeled back the cheap curtains and was astounded by the view. "Oh yes," I breathed. "This is the place." I pulled on pants and flip-flops, hugging my arms to my chest as I ran out the motel door and dashed across the street to see the ocean. It was like something out of Steinbeck, nature unspoiled by man, never letting you forget how awesome and terrible and powerful it could be, how worthy of respect. After crossing the street and hopping over a guardrail, I stood on a grassy and rocky cliff leading to a steep drop to dramatic, crashing waves below. In the morning light, the ocean glinted like a jewel. A steady breeze caressed my face, and I could feel the mist as the water collided roughly with rock.

"You all right there?" Jasper stood at the door of our room wearing only a pair of jeans.

"Oh, Jasper, it's beautiful. This is the place. And I think it has to be now."

There weren't any cars out, which was good, because this moment was just for us. I also suspected that you needed permission or a permit or something before you dumped human ashes in a public place—hells, it was probably illegal. For many reasons, it seemed as though now was the time. I doubted the water would look prettier at any other time of the day.

"Do you want me to …?" he trailed off, pointing his thumb behind him.

"Yes, do you mind? Could you bring her here?" I didn't want to take my eyes off the swirling water, the glinting sunlight, the multitude of colors bleeding across the sky. I hadn't taken more than three deep breaths before Jasper was by my side, offering me the brass urn. He hadn't even put on socks, choosing instead to dash across the street in bare feet.

"Isn't that asphalt freezing?" I asked, concerned.

"I don't want you—or her—to miss this light," he shrugged. He handed me my mother's ashes. "Are you ready, do you think?"

I felt strangely calm and centered as I nodded, taking the urn from his hands. I was glad his hands had touched the jar too, that we'd both carried her in our hands to this, her final resting place.

Jasper had to help me undo the lid, and I very nearly dropped the whole thing off the end of the cliff. I supposed the funeral homes and crematoriums didn't want accidental spillage of ashes. It was probably bad for business, or maybe a violation of health codes.

"Now?" he asked when the urn, finally opened, was securely in my hands.

"We should say something, right?" I whispered. Suddenly I was afraid of letting her go. This was the last part of my mother I would ever hold. So much of her had disappeared or died over the years, and now this handful of ash was all that was left. Was it foolish to scatter what remained into the wind?

No—it would be selfish to keep her trapped. I was frozen, unable to scatter the ashes and say goodbye to the last tangible part of her. After this, all that would remain would be my memories. Maybe her existence would feel only like a dream. Who would remember that there ever was a Mary Louise Brandon? She existed only in my mind now. Maybe she'd never existed at all.

Just then Jasper cleared his throat. "Ms. Brandon, you challenged me to be a better person every time I saw you. I will never be the same, because you were a part of my life, because you gave me a piece of you, even before I ever found your greatest treasure." Jasper squeezed my shoulder.

"Okay," I said, feeling his words could cover both of us. "Mom—Mommy, my sweetest mama, you were my whole world, and I guess I was yours too. I'll try to make you proud of me someday. You'll live on inside my heart, inside of Mary Alice, and in that way, you'll always be here with me."

"She lives in me too," Jasper said, bowing his head, and I wasn't sure if he was trying not to cry.

I was ready to tip the jar over, but I kept stopping myself at the last minute. There was no going back after this. I was frozen with indecision and fear of the unknown, afraid that memory was too tied to material objects.

"Help me?" I asked finally, after I was sure I was going to lose my nerve before I could set her free.

He placed his hands around mine on the urn and looked deeply into my eyes. "Are you sure you're ready?"

"No," I said. "But that doesn't matter, because I know this is right. It's the only way this could have ended."

"On three?" he suggested.

"One, two, five," I counted.

"Three, sir," he corrected.

"Three," I repeated, and I thought this would be the way my mother would want to be set free, with love and Monty Python jokes and the beautiful morning light. The ashes slipped through the air, swirling down toward the water like a giant, living hourglass, a reminder that time marched on no matter what we tried to do to stop it.

My heart sang goodbye to my mother's ashes as they flew in the wind. "You've come home, Mom," I said.

When the urn was empty, Jasper removed his hands from over mine. "Are you all right?" he asked, cupping my cheek softly in his warm hand.

I nodded, not wanting to speak just yet. I watched as a bright sunbeam seemed to creep right toward me, reflecting off the polished metal. And I saw my hands, my fingers wrapped tightly around my mother's final human shell, and realized that these were my mother's hands. How had I never seen that before?

I sat on the ground still cold with the night's chill, set down the empty urn, and turned my hands one way and the other in the light, now more gold than red or orange.

"Fly now, Mom," I said, interlocking my thumbs into a butterfly made of my hands and letting the sun cast a shadow on my lap. "You're free. Be part of the whole world; touch every corner of the universe. Don't let anyone tell you who to be. Including me."

Jasper gave me a minute before offering a hand to pull me back up to standing. We stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down toward the churning water. I couldn't even make out ash particles. She was already gone, reabsorbed into the universe's energy.

"What now?" Jasper asked after we'd listened to the other breathe for some time.

"Now?" I asked. "Well," I said, furrowing my brow in thought, "I suppose ... the rest of our lives."

The world seemed to tilt as I rested my head on his shoulder, and we listened to the wind, the surf, and the beating of our hearts as the sun rose higher in the sky like a promise.

* * *

[1] Tylan Greenstein, 2007, as recorded on Girlyman's _Everything's Easy_ (2009).

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A/N: OMG almost the end! Reviews get eighth grade journal excerpts, and it's a good thing this story is nearly done, because I am just about out of eighth grade journal material. Also, I hope this makes sense because I sleep-typed a good portion of it.  
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	28. A Pure Flash of Lightning

**A/N: Final chapter! See you at the bottom (TWHS).**

**Disclaimer: Even Tyra Banks owns the following more than I do.**

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Chapter 28: A Pure Flash of Lightning**

_You're a girl  
Rising from a shell  
Running through spring  
With summer's hand in reach now  
It is your time_

_- Tori Amos [1]_

I looked out at the crowd from the low stage. So many familiar faces, the "regulars" I'd served drinks to so many times, but I realized now that I knew almost none of their names. How strange, that my life here had been such a charade, as if it had been a bland cover story to disguise some dangerous career as a CIA agent. I should have had a secret room in the pub filled with wigs and costumes for all my classified spying missions. _We were always acting, one way or another_, Mary Alice reminded me.

An almost forgotten, comforting noise surrounded me, and I closed my eyes, letting the flutter and pattering of applause wrap around me like a warm breeze. I wiggled my toes inside my shoes and focused on my breathing, imagining I was inhaling the crowd's energy. I felt a tap on my shoulder. "We should start the next song," he whispered in my ear, and I remembered where I was and nodded, gripping the mic as I opened my eyes.

He started plucking away on his guitar, and we sang a mellow yet menacing, quietly seething version of Hole's "Violet," until we got to the final chorus, and I just screamed at the top of my lungs, calling up all the times from deep in my belly that I'd pushed Mary Alice away, when I'd been forced to hide her from hurtful hands or prying eyes. Everything else disappeared except for me and my rage, but I had a vague sense of something behind me holding me up, the sound of plastic pick on metal strings, the solidity of one man's love.

Tomorrow I'd be leaving this city, this life, and I had no idea when or if I'd ever return.

* * *

Once we'd said goodbye to my mother's earthly body in the little town of Elk, it took me a while to realize that I, like my mom, was finally free. Now nothing tied me to this place, or to my mindless job. I no longer had to live frugally in order to pay for her care. My whole life was ahead of me. What would I do with it?

I'd never made plans other than to make sure my mom was safe and as happy as she could be, given the circumstances. I hadn't expected to lose her so early. I missed her, but the truth was I'd been missing her since I was still a child. The idea of having complete freedom—both financially and emotionally—to do whatever I wanted overwhelmed me. I realized how little my life had ever been my own. When was the last time I'd felt free, a bird soaring on the breeze?

Being with Jasper had made me realize my life here was only a husk, but even as present as he'd made me feel, I knew I still was living only half a life, as if my legs were bound together, allowing me to take only the tiniest of steps. Now that all my bonds were cut, I felt as helpless as a newborn baby, my limbs free but unsure in the infinite space around me. There had been something comforting about the confinement, something safe. I understood now why infants responded so well to being swaddled.

I let Mary Alice guide me a lot of those days. I'd lose track of my thoughts and find myself at a local coffee shop, in front of the bulletin board plastered with audition notices, advertisements for voice and dance lessons. I'd rip a few of the tabs off the flyers as if I were absentmindedly picking flowers, shove them deep into my pockets, and would forget about them until it came time to do laundry and these little crinkly scraps of paper would fall out of my hands as I turned my pants pockets inside out.

It seemed Mary Alice wanted me to go back to the theater.

I tried to consider it one day in the laundry room of my building, tried to imagine myself waiting in some community center hallway with a bunch of people dressed "ready to move," preparing my two sixteen-bar excerpts of ballad and up-tempo, my monologue. I was a wreck, my hands shaking, my heartbeat speeding, and I'd have to pull at my hair to stop the panic attack. "I can't," I said to my reflection in the glass window of the dryer. My clothes were tumbling inside, and the round window reminded me of a porthole on a ship.

I touched my hand to the warm glass, and Mary Alice stared back at me. _Remember what Mr. Crandall said. Fight for it. We can do it, you and I._

The dryer buzzed angrily then, and I jumped away, shaking the cobwebs loose in my head. I tried to let my mind stay blank as I folded my clothes before putting them back into my laundry basket. The freshly washed clothes radiated heat as I balanced the basket on my hip, and I wished it was Jasper's hands instead. He hadn't been around as often, trying to keep up with grading for his classes and studying for the MCATs. I was just fine on my own. It was strange; ever since we'd come back from scattering Mom's ashes ("Rest in Elk," we'd say whenever we mentioned her name, instead of "Rest in Peace," and it would always make me think of "Dogs in Elk"[2], which I think my mother would have found amusing), I just felt secure, grounded. He didn't need to be here all the time to reassure me that he loved me. I felt his love like a mantle on my shoulders, heavy and protective and present.

As I put my clothes away, I saw images of myself filling out forms, flying to schools, standing with the footlights blinding me, waiting for instructions from the audition panel. Mary Alice wanted me to do something, and I could already see this future. My whole body hummed as I considered all the steps it might take to reenter the world from which I'd fled. I had the time and the money now. I could be anyone I wanted, and not for fear that someone would find out who I really was. I had free rein, finally, to become fully _me_.

I spent the rest of the afternoon online, researching programs, requesting catalogs and applications. And then I forgot about it until I'd find my mailbox jammed so tightly that it was like a tug of war to get my mail out some days.

"What's all this?" Jasper asked one afternoon, surprising me as I sat on the floor, surrounded by glossy catalogs. It hadn't taken long for me to get him a set of keys to my place. It made me feel safer.

I almost hid the brochures away, feeling a familiar shame, but I stopped myself. This was Jasper. I had no reason to lie. "I'm, um, thinking of going back to school," I said.

His face brightened, and he flopped on his stomach next to me, flipping through the catalogs and giving me unsolicited opinions about the cities some of the schools were in. "Evanston's nice," he said, tapping the Northwestern brochure, "but you'd better be ready for some cold-ass weather. You'll have to bundle up so much that you'll be like that kid in _A Christmas Story_ who can't put his arms down."

"I have to get in first," I said quietly, gazing at my hands in my lap.

"Of course you'll get in," he said, sitting up so abruptly that glossy booklets went flying. "You're one in a million."

I snorted. "Jasper, you've never seen me _do_ anything. How can you know?"

"I know how well you can hide. I've seen you slip inside other people's perceptions of you to make things easier. It's only because I see all of you that I can tell."

A quick call to Mr. Crandall was all it took to find an acting coach and a voice teacher in Seattle. I didn't know if I'd be let into graduate programs without a bachelor's in the field, but Mr. Crandall assured me that the performing arts was one of those areas where it didn't matter as much. "There will always be those assholes who think you need some bullshit on paper to prove you're worthy of their institution, but then those people don't have the ability to truly cultivate an artist."

Jasper helped me study for my GREs. Some of the schools required them; some did not. I supposed "studying" wasn't quite the right term, because we usually ended up in a tangle on the floor, our discarded clothing leaving a breadcrumb trail back to my abandoned book of practice tests. The truth was, I didn't need his help. Despite spending the last few years mixing drinks and breathing in alcohol fumes, my mind was still sharp.

I knew I had only a few short months before I'd be auditioning, and I knew I needed to brush up my skills. In any case, if I got auditions, I would have to be on the road so much that I couldn't possibly keep working for Rosalie. I had to quit. I didn't need the money now that I wasn't paying Meadowview's monthly bills.

When I finally gave notice, Rosalie was strangely upset about it.

"You're quitting?"

I nodded.

"Is it something I did?"

"No," I said, nervously drumming my fingers on the armrest as I sat across from her intimidating desk.

"Are you unhappy? Is there a customer bothering you? I'll ban him—them—whoever. Just tell me who."

"Thanks, but no. I … just … I don't know. I need to live my life. I need to go out there, into the world. God, I've never been farther east than Oregon."

"Do you need another vacation? Just take a few weeks off?"

I hadn't planned on going into it, but in that moment, telling her felt right. I mumbled into my lap, "I'm trying to go to grad school, to pursue acting. And it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of trips and research, and I need to focus."

I looked up, surprised to see Rosalie's eyes misted over. "Well, as much as I wish I could change your mind, I know this is just a job. This place can't possibly compete with your dream. I'll miss you. We'll all miss you."

"Really?" I blurted out before I could stop myself. I'd always thought we'd each merely tolerated the other.

"God, Alice, you're like the heart of the pub. It won't be the same without you. And I … kind of think of you like my little sister." She shrugged and looked at me staring at her, my jaw open. "What?" she demanded.

I shook my head. "I … kind of thought you hated me."

"Oh, believe me, Alice, if I hated you, you would know." She chuckled to herself. "Oh, I could have made your life so miserable." She was lost in thought, no doubt imagining scenarios of torture and humiliation.

"Eep," I said.

She stood up suddenly, and I crouched, ready to spring and make a run for it. "Well," she said, "as sad as it makes me to see you go, I accept your resignation. And you're always welcome here. You know that, right?" She came over and gave me an awkward hug. "You'll keep in touch?"

"Sure," I said, but I thought I was only being polite until Rose surprised me with a farewell party on my last day, with another of Bella's beautiful cakes and free drinks for Jasper and his roommates.

"I don't drink on the job," I said, as Rose pushed another Bellini toward me.

"Shut it," she said. "You're not on the job. This is for you. This is me thanking you for your dedication and hard work."

Closing out that night, I had a lump in my throat. This place, and Rosalie, and everyone else here—they had somehow become family without my even realizing it. Family could find you in strange places sometimes. I hugged Rosalie as I left the last time as her employee. "Thanks for tonight," I said, slightly tipsy.

"The least I could do, my petite munchkin."

"The _least_ you could have done was shove me out the door without getting your heels embedded in my ass," I pointed out. "And … don't call me 'munchkin.'"

"I suppose," she said, flipping off the lights as she held the door open for me. "You'll stop in though, won't you? Let us know how you're doing?"

And that was all it took for me to start opening up to Rosalie too, calling her once a week to tell her about my progress, about my lessons that week, about writing application essays and preparing audition tapes, and about the sidesplitting afternoon Jasper and I had spent getting my headshots done.

I'd asked him to come with me to the photographer's studio, and he spent so much time cutting up that the photographer nearly threw him out. "I'm not running a daycare," she snapped, "nor a zoo."

"Jasper, you're my little monkey, aren't you?" I said as the photographer adjusted the lighting.

He coughed. "Gigantic monkey," he corrected, adjusting his pants deliberately.

I rolled my eyes.

"Can we focus, Ms. Brandon?" said the photographer peevishly. I'd dropped my father's surname and taken on my mom's again. I didn't need to hide who I was. I was proud to be a Brandon. I was proud to be my mother's daughter.

She changed my body position slightly, tilted my head to the side, and then stood on a small stepladder. "You love that monkey back there, don't you?" she asked with a sudden kindness.

"I do," I said, as the shutter clicked again and again.

"So look at the camera like you're looking into his face. Like you can't wait to maul him with kisses."

Jasper was right there behind her, and I looked at him. "Don't look at him; look at the camera, Alice. See his face up here."

"Give me a second," I said. I looked at Jasper standing behind the lighting umbrella until the light and his shape burned into my eyes, creating an afterimage. I let my gaze float upward until I met the camera's large, reflective eye. Jasper's shape still lingered. _I love you with my whole body and my whole soul_, I thought at the ghost image, and the photographer said, "That's the one."

As the fall went on, we were busy with our respective applications, interviews, auditions. I wanted Jasper to come with me to my auditions, but I knew it was an impossibility. "Where do you think you might get into med school?" I asked.

"Why, honeybee?"

"Well," I said, tracing a shape on my knee, "I want to be near you."

Jasper got serious for a moment. "Do _not_ plan your life around me."

I was hurt by this sudden rejection, but then he spoke again before I could open my mouth to reply. "Alice, we'll always be together, no matter where we are. But you need to find the place you'll fit in."

"Isn't that place with you?" I asked.

"Only you know what school will give you what you need. And I'm not letting you give up this dream. You wouldn't want me to go to some lesser med school just to stay near you, would you?"

"Of course not," I answered automatically. It made sense when I thought about _him_—I'd just figured I'd follow him to the school that was best for him. I'd make do with whatever program I found as near to him as I could. "But you're going to be a doctor. You're going to help people."

"Alice, what you do is just as important to the world. And, if I may be selfish for a moment, your personal happiness is more important to me than the temporary satisfaction I'd have of living in the same city. We will make it work, no matter where we are. Follow your path, Alice, as you believe in mine."

There was so much to do, so much to catch up on. I took a few community college courses in music theory and history, and prepared the equivalent of a senior recital, which I performed in my voice teacher's studio to a small audience of Jasper, Rosalie, and Fitzsie, whose extravagant hat barely fit through my voice teacher's door. I got my audition package together, my monologues. And when winter came, I began traveling to schools where I'd been granted auditions, living out of my suitcase, sleeping in a different hotel every night. I loved it. I loved standing on those stages—all stages had an energy about them—and disappearing into Alma from _Summer and Smoke_ and Ariel from _The Tempest_, not afraid of anything the auditors would ask me to speak, read, or sing. I was ready. My whole life had brought me here, and in my purse I carried the sad, square dishcloth that Jasper had knit for me way back when. It was my talisman, and I would press it against my heart and touch it to my cheek lightly enough not to mess my makeup as the monitor would inevitably say, "Please follow me to the stage, Ms. Brandon."

I'd come back from each trip, looking for Jasper by the baggage claim at SeaTac, and as happy as I was to come home to him, I knew, clutching my makeup case to me, that I was finally back on my true path.

So when I got accepted to the master's program in musical theater at the Steinhardt School of NYU, I knew that's where I needed to be, even though Jasper was going to Penn's medical school. "Manhattan and Philadelphia aren't too far apart," I said, and Jasper nodded.

"We're going to be just fine, butterbean."

Tomorrow we were leaving in Fitzsie's car—she'd given me the title when she found I was going away. "I'll come back soon," I said, kissing her dry cheek. I didn't know when I'd come back, but I couldn't bear to say goodbye to Fitzsie forever. She'd been my only friend for so long.

"I don't know," Fitzsie said. "I've got half a mind to follow you two out to the East Coast. It's too damp here all the time. Edgar doesn't like it one bit, do you, Edgar?" She stooped down to pet the purring ball of fur.

"You're coming to the pub tonight, right, Fitzsie?" I asked.

"Wouldn't miss it!" she said, squeezing Edgar a bit too tightly in her enthusiasm. He squeaked and bolted from the room.

So here we all were: me, Jasper, his roommates, Rosalie, Bella, and this room of familiar strangers who had been nameless but still had been woven into the tapestry of my life here. I'd wanted to give a little goodbye concert to these people, to show them what I was, who I truly was. It wasn't their right to know, nor was it my duty to share, but now I found I wanted people to know the real Mary Alice Brandon. It honored my mother's memory. It honored the scared girl who had been trapped inside for so many years.

It wasn't unusual to have live music at the Unicorn, but the patrons were surprised to see me up there. We invited Fitzsie up to sing "Anything You Can Do" from _Annie Get Your Gun_ as Jasper plunked out block chords from a fake-book on the old, out-of-tune upright piano. The old lady still had quite a set of lungs on her. But most of the evening was just me and Jasper, singing, harmonizing, sometimes getting lost in the light of the other.

Tomorrow we were going to begin our drive across the country, and then I was going to leave him in Philadelphia as I continued on into Manhattan, into the West Village to the tiny but tidy apartment I'd found near West 4th.

We would be apart, but we would be closer to each other as ever, knowing we each were pursuing our life's dream. I could close my eyes and be with him wherever he was. I _felt_ him. And we would see each other nearly every weekend.

Jasper launched into the final song, picking away on the guitar. The audience didn't seem to recognize the melody, but they quickly began to bob their heads to the beat as we got into it. "_It's not the changes but the spaces in between / It's not the story but the cuts between the scenes / It's the part where your eyes can't focus / The minute just before you notice /The images align naturally_,"[3] we sang, our voices winding above and below each other's, twisting in harmonies like Tibetan prayer flags in the wind. Through the final chorus, I could feel Jasper by my side, his energy crackling by me like the air before a thunderstorm, and I thought of how far we'd come just to end up in the same place, this bar, right here.

We were not the same people we had been that far-away New Year's Eve, timidly holding hands, me scared to death, him full of hope. "_It just takes some getting used to, is all, is all_," we sang together. "_Is all, is all, is all, is all, is all, is all_," we repeated, not wanting the song or the evening or this chapter in our lives to end just yet, standing on the edge of this precipice, where we could see the past behind and the future ahead, and I didn't regret anything, not one moment of pain or fear, if it had helped bring me to this moment, to this place I was always meant to be.

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[1] Tori Amos, "Ribbons Undone," _The Beekeeper_ (2005).

[2] "Dogs in Elk" is a strange little Internet story that may or may not be true, but it's a fascinating and hilarious read. You can Google "Dogs in Elk" or follow this link: www(dot)jerrypournelle(dot)com/reports/jerryp/dogsinelk(dot)html#dogs

[3] The Paper Raincoat, "Motion Sickness," _The Paper Raincoat_ (2009). Seriously, check these guys out.

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A/N: So hey, this is the end. Thank you to everyone who has been here from the beginning, everyone who found my story yesterday, and everyone who found it somewhere along the way. I know Jalice stories aren't the most popular, and I know this little story will never be as popular as some of my others, but it's very dear to me, and I'm grateful to every one of you for reading.**

**I'd like to give special thanks to my old Saturday night chat posse: JayneRulis (who was the spark of this entire endeavor), KnittingVamp7, Grendelsmother, ceci9293, PortiaKhalo, and especially Killerlashes for being so encouraging when this story was just a ten-page Word document that I never thought was worth posting.**

**Extra love and squishes to Algie, philadelphic, MsKathy, and adorablecullens for making every day hilarious.**

**Big hugs to adoraklutz for writing me the most encouraging reviews and being a cheerleader even when I felt like a big, lumpy turd.**

**And all my love to my ficwife, NelsonSmandela. You. Complete. Me. MFEO!**

**Reviews get one final excerpt from my eighth grade creative writing journal.**

**- Feisty Y. Beden, May 14, 2010  
**


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